Hagiography

Definition: a biography or writing about a saint; or an over-idealized biography

Why I Looked It Up

In a book about Algiers in 1913:

In 1907, a book published in Algiers provided brief biographies of great figures from the Algerian past, the kind of hagiographical exercise which Friend republicans, who went in for much the same thing, would understand as being crucial to the formation of a sense of nationhood.

Postscript

I want to use this word in a conference presentation, so I’m trying to figure out how to pronounce it.

The most common form is “HAG-e-og-graphy” (hard “g” on “hag”)

But I’ve also found one claim to “HAGE-e-og-graphy” (soft “g” on “hage”)

Postscript

From a footnote in Trillion Dollar Coach:

A hagiography is a biography that idealizes the subject.