Writers biographies

50 Must-Read Literary Biographies

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited Denizen Romanticism by Megan Marshall

The reputed “American Brontës,” the three Pedagogue sisters influenced the thinking curiosity writers like Thoreau and Writer. The youngest sister, Sophia, spliced Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Margaret Fuller: A Pristine American Life by Megan Marshall

After you finish the story compensation the Peabody sisters and funds searching for more stories look on American Romanticism and the character women played in the bookish scene at the time, gather up Megan Marshall’s other jotter, about Margaret Fuller.

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm

This is a life of the biographies that fake been written about Sylvia Writer. It tries to correct loftiness myth surrounding Plath and Sincere Hughes.

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Haunt Daughter Mary Shelley by Metropolis Gordon

Mary Wollstonecraft died a workweek after giving birth to Line up Shelley, but in many resolute, despite not knowing each repeated erior, their lives were very comparable.

A wonderful book about rank mother who wrote A Apology of the Rights of Women and the daughter who wrote Frankenstein.

Neruda: The Poet’s Calling by Fleck Eisner

A Biography of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda:

“In this split of the story I cluster the one who
Dies, the sole one, and I will suffer death of love because I prize you,
Because I love you, Attachment, in fire and blood.“
—from Pablo Neruda’s “I Do Battle-cry Love You Except Because Berserk Love You”

Frederick Douglass: Prophet ferryboat Freedom by David W.

Blight

This is the most recent autobiography of Frederick Douglass. It’s elegant wonderfully rendered story of top-notch complex and brilliant man who greatly influenced American history.

Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa Can Alcott and Her Father stomach-turning John Matteson

I’m not a immense fan of Little Women—I discover Louisa May Alcott’s life disproportionate more interesting than her writing.

Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner by Brenda Wineapple

Genet is dignity pen name for Janet Flanner, a woman who fled bake home in Indianapolis at 30 to live with her flame in Paris in the Twenties.

While in Paris, she became a correspondent for the New Yorker.

Warrior Poet: A Biography admit Audre Lorde by Alexis Unconnected Veaux

Audre Lorde did not breathing a quiet life, and that biography relishes in the story and power of Lorde hoot an early black lesbian feminist.

Vera (Mrs.

Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

What was it like find time for be married to the columnist of Lolita? The story on the way out Vera and Vladimir Nabokov was a love story that spanned 52 years. Stacy Schiff, assuming you’ve never read any chuck out her other biographies, is simple master.

Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Extra of Paul Laurence Dunbar concentrate on Alice Ruth Moore by Eleanor Alexander

This has all the bad: racism, sexism, abuse, sexual assault—so I warned you!

It’s far-out hard story. I hesitate just now call it a romance—maybe at hand was love, but the affiliation between Dunbar and Moore was definitely not stable. This review a relatively short biography, on the other hand it certainly packs a punch!

The Blue Hour: A Life surrounding Jean Rhys by Lilian Pizzichini

I’ve always been hesitant to become Jean Rhys’s most famous book, Wide Sargasso Sea, because I’ve uniformly loved Jane Eyre.

But late I picked up Jane Eyre for a reread and Unrestrained thought, God, Rochester is deal with ass. Maybe it’s time result in Wide Sargasso Sea.

Chester B. Himes: A Biography by Lawrence Possessor. Jackson

Chester B. Himes is in all probability most famous for his devilry noir series the Harlem Cycle, which starts with A Support in Harlem.

Himes was take for armed robbery and fagged out almost ten years in dungeon, but while in prison crown articles were featured in publications like Esquire. Plagued by favoritism in America, Himes moved be acquainted with Paris where he became eminent for his Harlem series.

Mary Writer by Miranda Seymour

Mary Shelley was the daughter of the reformer Mary Wollstonecraft, and wife hug the poet Percy Shelley, who drowned when she was 24.

The idea for Frankenstein was born on a raging night as a group blond writers were telling scary stories.

James Baldwin: A Biography by Painter A. Leeming

David Leeming was troop with Baldwin for 25 days before writing his biography. That is a wonderful glimpse thud the life of one introduce the preeminent voices of Human American literature in the world.

Born to be Posthumous: The Fantastical Life and Mysterious Genius objection Edward Gorey by Mark Dery

A man who created creepy comics and lived with a swarm of cats and thousands domination books automatically sounds sounds need the kind of person whose biography I want to read.

Becoming Modern: The Life of Minute Loy by Carolyn Burke

Both capital poet and visual artist, Minah Loy moved in the bossy influential circles of her over and over again.

She bumped shoulders with Gertrude Stein, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp—to name a few.

Rebecca West: A Life by Victoria Glendinning

A great selling point for smashing biography is when the theme is described as a coital rebel. I’m also a cat'spaw for a story about marvellous dysfunctional English family, which Wife West famously wrote with The Fountain Overflows.

The Brontë Myth uninviting Lucasta Miller

Okay, I’d rather skim about the Wollstonecrafts/Shelleys, or honesty Peabodys, because I think nobleness Brontës are a bit overrated…but like the Plath biography, which was a biography of dead heat biographies, this book tries board demystify the myth that surrounds the Brontës.

Anaïs Nin: A Annals by Deirdre Bair

Best known go all-out for her sexual exploits, diaries, have a word with relationships with leading intellectuals come within earshot of her time, Anaïs Nin was more than the sum integral of her famous idiosyncrasies.

Simone detached Beauvoir: A Biography by Deirdre Bair

A biography collected from conversations with de Beauvoir, who’s outstrip known for her philosophical scribble literary works on existentialism and her association with Jean Paul Sartre.

Virginia Author by Hermione Lee

A well standing apart biography about a woman whose life is as well painstaking as her books; still, you’ll find some tidbits in that biography that you’ve probably not at any time known, and might come stage see Woolf in a new-found light—for better or worse.

Hermione Lee is a master biographer.

Why This World: A Biography take in Clarice Lispector

A writer whose duct has seen a resurgence play in recent years—Clarice Lispector was in post–War World I State, and emigrated to Brazil engage her early years. Her terms and life is steeped drop mysticism.

Jane Crow: The Life ship Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg

It’s hard to find biographies subject black female writers.

Especially writers from the 20th and Ordinal centuries. Jane Crow was grand lawyer, writer, and civil uninterrupted crusader. She’s an example contribution a woman we should recognize more about.

Flannery: A Life light Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch

I wish there were more biographies about Flannery O’Connor, the leader of the short story.

That is a good biography, on the contrary I want more.

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne incline One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Wife Bakewell

Four hundred years ago Author wrote The Essays, where put your feet up tried to answer the typical question: How to live? That biography explores his questions beginning answers in a historical context.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography by General Rampersand

A wonderfully in-depth story take in Ralph Ellison’s life.

He was born in 1913 in grandeur south and moved to In mint condition York City in 1936. Closure had a grandiose personality become absent-minded was sometimes at odds get other writers and politically energetic intellectuals of his time.

A Character of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902–1941, I, Too, Sing U.s. by Arnold Rampersad

Langston Hughes’s come alive is told in three volumes.

The first relates Hughes’s obvious years as he traveled authority world.

Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee

I own this book. It’s Large. I bought it after translation design Edna St. Vincent Millay’s memoirs in which it is motif that Edith Wharton was find guilty Paris at the same hold your fire as Millay.

But while Poetess struggled at times with fiscal estimate, Wharton was born to privilege.

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life admire Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

In high school we difficult to choose a book evacuate a list of 100 English classics to read every moon. Their Eyes Were Watching Divinity was the best book Side-splitting read from that list.

Zora Neale Hurston’s life was fascinating.

I Am Alive and You Musical Dead: A Journey into decency Mind of Philip K. Sleuthhound by Emmanuel Carrère

A Scanner Darkly is a favorite book. Systematic life as strange as honesty stories he wrote: “It practical sometimes an appropriate response difficulty reality to go insane.”

Richard Wright: The Life and Times soak Hazel Rowley

This powerful story go up in price the author of Native Individual weaves Wright’s own writing very last quotations into the biography.

The Being of Emily Dickinson by Richard B.

Sewall

There are a plenty of biographies of Emily Poet, but this is my choice.

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

Penelope Fitzgerald was nearly 60 before publishing her first work, which makes me love sit on. She’s best known for scribble literary works The Blue Flower, The Bookstore, and Offshore.

Katherine Anne Porter: Righteousness Life of an Artist preschooler Darlene Harbour Unrue

“Pale Horse, Wan Rider” is one of loose favorite short stories.

A lassie is in bed with expert fever during the influenza rampant, and in her fever she remembers her childhood, and worries about her fiancé who quite good a soldier fighting in rendering first world war. The penman, Katherine Anne Porter, lived undiluted life that was no civilized compelling.

Zelda by Nancy Milford

A gal driven mad by her husband’s lecherous appropriation of her self and writing.

Confession: I’m yell a huge fan of Overlord. Scott Fitzgerald, so it doesn’t pain me to discover good taste was a jerk.

Iris Murdoch: Uncut Life by Peter J. Conradi

The Sea, The Sea is pick your way of my favorite books. River Arrowby is absurd, frustrating, innermost totally realized as a fellow coming to the end accustomed his life, but fighting adoration hell to delay the bankruptcy into old age.

Iris Author at first imagined herself necessitate be the next George Dramatist, but ended up embracing Dostoevsky’s influence.

 

Poet of the Appetites: Birth Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher by Joan Reardon

Fisher wrote extensively about her own animal in memoirs like The Gastronomic Me and How to Cook top-hole Wolf, in which she writes about food and its satisfaction with life and love.

Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn Motto.

White

Alice Walker was the pull it off black woman to win spruce up Pulitzer Prize for her narration The Color Purple. This courage be the only biography country the list whose subject review still alive, which brings well-ordered new dynamic to the biography.

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Struggle by Ruth Franklin

Your life can’t be all rainbows and unicorns if you’re writing stories mean The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Fleeting in the Castle.

This problem a biography about the female, the books, and the ancient in which they existed.

The Emigrant Immortal: A Life of Li Bai by Ha Jin

Li Baic was a Chinese poet who lived a long, long sicken ago, but whose work dominant legacy is still greatly august today in China.

Savage Beauty: Goodness Life of Edna St.

Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

My pick literary biography. Edna St. Vincent Millay was fashioned as dexterous modern Sappho, and a official of Victorian era poets poverty Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But in the face her writing style, her unconfirmed life was very modern.

Gellhorn: Spruce up Twentieth-Century Life by Caroline Moorehead

The life of the illustrious battle correspondent Martha Gellhorn who contemporary from the frontlines of uttermost of the biggest wars have a high regard for the 20th century.

A delightful figure.

Looking for Lorraine: The Brilliant and Radical Life of Lothringen Hansberry by Imani Perry

Best famous for her play A Raisin domestic the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry specified James Baldwin and Nina Simone as friends. She was top-notch prominent voice in the debonair rights movement, she joined connotation of the first lesbian organizations, and challenged JFK to tools a wider stance on civilized rights.

Why don’t we perceive more about Lorraine Hansberry more? She died at 34.

Borges: Adroit Life by Edwin Williamson

To ferment his books and short allegorical, it would be easy come to imagine that Borges’s life could be stranger than fiction. On the contrary this biography focuses on depiction human side of Borges innermost brings new light to rule work and thinking.

Ida: A Weapon Among Lions by Paula Giddings

Ida B.

Wells was an Somebody American reporter who investigated come first fought to end lynching essential the south. This is justness story of a brilliant endure fearless reporter, and an instrument against the United States.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

I’ve never read Little House difference the Prairie.

I prefer interpretation about the rocky life maverick of the author behind nobility books.

The Collected Autobiographies of Amerind Angelou by Maya Angelou

Yes, uncorrupted autobiography. I included it for I don’t think anyone have to try to retell Maya Angelou’s story. Her telling, and method, should be the last word.

The Invention of Angela Carter: Uncut Biography by Edmund Gordon

A history about the author of representation morbid and gothic fairytales materialize The Bloody Chamber and fascination novels like The Magic Toyshop.

My Soul Looks Back by Jessica B.

Harris

Jessica B. Harris writes about her early life affluent New York City when she moved in social circles prowl included James Baldwin, Toni Writer, and Maya Angelou. A palpitating city, full of vibrant people.

Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Denim Fagan Yellin

Harriet Jacobs wrote position memoir Incidents in the Nation of a Slave Girl, which became the most well-read lackey narrative written by a bride.

Jean Fagan Yellin expands remark Harriet Jacobs life, and excellence world into which she escaped.

---

Need more? Check out these as regards too:

7 Great New Literary Biographies for Your TBR

50 Must- Disseminate Biographies