| Summary: | The biography was for a long time accused of a “scientifically absurd” distinction between society and individual and focusing on the magisterial role of individuals within history. The interest for biography has changed since the late 1980s, according to a new conception of the interconnection between individuals and history. Biography is now considered as the critical representation of the individuals operating within society, and hence as an interpretative approach of historical events. The case of a character such as Aristotle Kourtidis (1858-1928), pedagogue of the late nineteenth century and the first children’s writer in Greece, neither singular nor totally unknown, questions the profound sense of the genre itself. Aristotle Kourtidis was a social agent, today rather forgotten but deeply appreciated by his contemporaries, who moderately reflected the ideology of the rising bourgeoisie and the transition of society to the modern era. His biography does not describe the detachment of the individual above society, but on the contrary it describes the formation of an individual “within society”, or in relation to society. If therefore Kourtidis’s biography could not be justified on the basis of exemplarity or heroism, the person, observed acting in his social and cultural environment, contributes to the understanding of Greek history and society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
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