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Originally Posted by willravel
If you're going to be showing it to anyone, you need to show where you got your information. If you're going to publish and sell it, you need permission from that person or that person's legal representatives (I'm not sure what those 'unauthorized biographies' are all about).
Is this a school project, or are you having this published?
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You definitely do NOT need permission from a biography's subject to publish. It's a free speech issue. I can write whatever I want about you so long as I don't cross the line into libel. Any good biography will bring out facts and perspectives on a person that are counter to that person's self-image and cultivated public image; to give the subject editorial control would go against both free speech and the principals of unbiased historical inquiry.
Many biographers will try to cultivate a good working relationship with their subjects, but only to get easier access to materials. I'd be very cautious around biographies that are authorized by their subjects: these are not historical scholarship but instead tools of the subjects public relations strategy.
A great example is Robert Caro, who wrote very unflattering biographies of Robert Moses and LBJ. In the beginning he had the cooperation of both subjects (or, in LBJ's case, his widow), and did extensive interviews with them. As they got wind of what he was actually writing about them they cut off contact and disavowed the works.