Character writing is my name for a genre of writing that attempts something like a character sketch of a type of persons, rather than a specific person.
There have been various famous examples historically, but it is hard to find them, and since this is not widely recognized as a genre, there are no histories of them to consult, or anything. This is an extremely incomplete list of notable historical examples, which I hope may one day be expanded, and maybe fleshed out into a history of the genre.
The list
Plato, Theaetetus, 172c–177c – comparison of the characters of the lawyer and of the philosopher
Plato, Republic – the descriptions of the men corresponding to each type of state, in book 8
Aristotle, Rhetoric, book 2, ch. 12–17
Theophrastus, Characters – probably the first dedicated work of character writing
Sir Thomas Overbury, New Characters
John Earle, Microcosmography
Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères
Henry Morley, Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century
George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such
G.K. Chesterton, A Miscellany of Men
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