thumb|Obituary for [[The Great War|WW1 death]]
An
obituary is primarily an attempt by a publication to give an account of the life of someone considered significant who has recently died. It is to be distinguished from a
death notice (also known as a
funeral notice), which is a paid advertisement written by family members and placed in a newspaper either by the family or the
funeral home.
Many news organisations have pre-written obituaries on file for notable individuals who are still living, allowing detailed, authoritative and lengthy obituaries to appear very quickly after their death.
History
The first obituary is very difficult to trace, however many candidates are found at the advent and popularization of the
printing press circa 1500s. The first obituaries were concise, simply containing the deceased name, birth date, death date, and cause of death.
During the late 1800s
John Thadeus Delane, an
English editor of the London newspaper
The Times, saw the potential for obituaries and began publishing them. This entailed newspapers recognizing a person's death as a solemn and important event that needed more than just a short announcement. As a result, obituaries grew in length and elaboration, containing short prayers, poems, and brief biographies.
At the onset of the 1900s modern advances in printing technology allowed obituaries to contain images; this allowed obituaries to become more elegant, but more solemn as well. As the late 1990s and early 2000s saw the internet become more popular and ubiquitous, obituaries became digitized and available as a search result in addition to newspapers.
Premature obituaries
By definition, obituaries should always be
posthumous. But occasionally obituaries are published, either accidentally or intentionally, while the person concerned is
still alive. Most are due to hoaxes, confusions between people with similar names, or the unexpected survival of someone who was close to death. Some others are published because of miscommunication between newspapers, family members and the
funeral home, often resulting in embarrassment for everyone involved.
Irish author
Brendan Behan said that there is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary. In this regard, some people will seek to have an unsuspecting newspaper editor publish a premature death notice or obituary as a malicious hoax, perhaps to gain revenge on the "deceased". To that end, nearly all newspapers now have policies requiring that death notices come from a reliable source (such as a
funeral home), though even this has not stopped some pranksters such as
Alan Abel.
Media
Obituaries are a notable feature of
The Economist, which publishes one full-page obituary per week, reflecting on the subject's life and influence on world history. Past subjects have ranged from
Ray Charles to
Uday Hussein.
The
British Medical Journal encourages doctors to write their own obituaries for publication after their death.
Pan Books publishes a series called
The Daily Telegraph Book of Obituaries, which are
anthologies of obituaries under a common theme, such as military obituaries, sports obituaries, heroes and adventurers, entertainers, rogues, eccentric lives, etc.
See also
