Abstract: Obituary has been published in the English world for nearly four centuries. This article summarizes the history of English obituary, reviews existing research legacies, and scrutinizes three cores of obituary as death notice, social document and miniature biography. Early obituary outstands for its focus on information and dissemination; later this genre has been marked by elements of news, publication and social functions; after the advent of the internet era and digital publication, the two cores of obituary as notice and document are increasingly marginalized, while the new center of obituary writing is shifting to the biographical core.

Keywords: obituary, death notice, news, biography

Huang Rong is a PhD candidate of Comparative and World Literature in the Institute of World Literature at School of Foreign Languages of Peking University (Beijing, 100871, China). Her research interests include English literature and life writing. E-mail: huangrong@pku.edu.cn.