[f. BIOGRAPHY (or its Gr. source) + -ER. (cf. astronomer): taking the place of the earlier biographist.] A writer of biographies, or of the ‘life’ of a particular person.
1715. Addison, Freeholder, No. 35 (1751), 209. Grub-street Biographers … watch for the Death of a great Man.
1790. Boswell, Johnson (1831), I. Introd. 48. I flatter myself that few biographers have entered upon such a work as this with more advantages.
a. 1849. H. Coleridge, North. Worthies (1852), Introd. 18. He would be a local biographer.
1855. Milman, Lat. Chr., VIII. viii. The seven or eight contemporary biographers of Becket.
