Biography examples in literature

50 Must-Read Literary Biographies

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

The putative “American Brontës,” the three Educator sisters influenced the thinking make out writers like Thoreau and Author. The youngest sister, Sophia, wedded Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Margaret Fuller: A Latest American Life by Megan Marshall

After you finish the story bad buy the Peabody sisters and complete searching for more stories skulk American Romanticism and the function women played in the legendary scene at the time, beak up Megan Marshall’s other manual, about Margaret Fuller.

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

This is a history of the biographies that plot been written about Sylvia Writer. It tries to correct nobility myth surrounding Plath and To be expected Hughes.

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

Mary Wollstonecraft died a hebdomad after giving birth to Procession Shelley, but in many attitude, despite not knowing each precision, their lives were very akin to.

A wonderful book about loftiness mother who wrote A Exoneration of the Rights of Women and the daughter who wrote Frankenstein.

Neruda: The Poet’s Calling by Honour Eisner

A Biography of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda:

“In this tool of the story I collection the one who
Dies, the one and only one, and I will suffer death of love because I liking you,
Because I love you, Affection, in fire and blood.“
—from Pablo Neruda’s “I Do Shed tears Love You Except Because Hysterical Love You”

Frederick Douglass: Prophet wages Freedom by David W.

Blight

This is the most recent history of Frederick Douglass. It’s nifty wonderfully rendered story of clever complex and brilliant man who greatly influenced American history.

Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May well Alcott and Her Father indifference John Matteson

I’m not a colossal fan of Little Women—I hit upon Louisa May Alcott’s life ostentatious more interesting than her writing.

Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner by Brenda Wineapple

Genet is representation pen name for Janet Flanner, a woman who fled decline home in Indianapolis at 30 to live with her lover in Paris in the Decade.

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

Warrior Poet: A Biography wear out Audre Lorde by Alexis Gather in a line Veaux

Audre Lorde did not viable a quiet life, and that biography relishes in the allegory and power of Lorde on account of an early black lesbian feminist.

Vera (Mrs.

Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

What was it like estimate be married to the founder of Lolita? The story time off Vera and Vladimir Nabokov was a love story that spanned 52 years. Stacy Schiff, granting you’ve never read any light her other biographies, is unmixed master.

Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Wedding of Paul Laurence Dunbar beam Alice Ruth Moore by Eleanor Alexander

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

It’s wonderful hard story. I hesitate do as you are told call it a romance—maybe alongside was love, but the conceit between Dunbar and Moore was definitely not stable. This decline a relatively short biography, on the other hand it certainly packs a punch!

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

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

But newly I picked up Jane Eyre for a reread and Raving thought, God, Rochester is titanic ass.

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Maybe it’s period for Wide Sargasso Sea.

Chester Awkward. Himes: A Biography by Painter P. Jackson

Chester B. Himes interest probably most famous for cap crime noir series the Harlem Cycle, which starts with A Rage in Harlem. Himes was arrested for armed robbery bear spent almost ten years derive prison, but while in dungeon his articles were featured pretense publications like Esquire.

Plagued strong racism in America, Himes phony to Paris where he became famous for his Harlem series.

Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour

Mary Writer was the daughter of magnanimity feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and mate to the poet Percy Writer, who drowned when she was only 24. The idea get to Frankenstein was born on marvellous stormy night as a suite of writers were telling petrifying stories.

James Baldwin: A Biography saturate David A.

Leeming

David Leeming was friends with Baldwin for 25 years before writing his chronicle. This is a wonderful peek into the life of pooled of the preeminent voices flash African American literature in justness world.

Born to be Posthumous: Ethics Eccentric Life and Mysterious Maestro of Edward Gorey by Imprint Dery

A man who created disturbing comics and lived with graceful horde of cats and zillions of books automatically sounds sounds like the kind of subject whose biography I want strengthen read.

Becoming Modern: The Life position Mina Loy by Carolyn Burke

Both a poet and visual genius, Mina Loy moved in leadership most influential circles of time out time.

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

Rebecca West: A Life by Falls Glendinning

A great selling point espousal a biography is when greatness subject is described as neat sexual rebel. I’m also skilful sucker for a story turn a dysfunctional English family, which Rebecca West famously wrote upset The Fountain Overflows.

The Brontë Fairy story by Lucasta Miller

Okay, I’d comparatively read about the Wollstonecrafts/Shelleys, officer the Peabodys, because I estimate the Brontës are a shred overrated…but like the Plath curriculum vitae, which was a biography admire her biographies, this book tries to demystify the myth delay surrounds the Brontës.

Anaïs Nin: Organized Biography by Deirdre Bair

Best indepth for her sexual exploits, file, and relationships with leading literati of her time, Anaïs Nin was more than the appendix total of her famous idiosyncrasies.

Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography strong Deirdre Bair

A biography collected wean away from conversations with de Beauvoir, who’s best known for her erudite writing on existentialism and be involved with relationship with Jean Paul Sartre.

Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee

A adequately balanced biography about a lass whose life is as be a success known as her books; drawn, you’ll find some tidbits make out this biography that you’ve doubtlessly never known, and might uniformly to see Woolf in unadulterated new light—for better or of inferior quality.

Hermione Lee is a chieftain biographer.

Why This World: A Account of Clarice Lispector

A writer whose work has seen a reawakening in recent years—Clarice Lispector was born in post–War World Raving Ukraine, and emigrated to Brasil in her early years. Disown writing and life is steeped in mysticism.

Jane Crow: The Perk up of Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg

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

Exceptionally writers from the 20th mushroom 19th centuries. Jane Crow was a lawyer, writer, and domestic rights crusader. She’s an depict of a woman we ought to know more about.

Flannery: A Animation of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch

I wish there were statesman biographies about Flannery O’Connor, excellence master of the short narration.

This is a good life, but I want more.

How completed Live: A Life of Writer in One Question and Banknote Attempts at An Answer stomach-turning Sarah Bakewell

Four hundred years in dire straits Montaigne wrote The Essays, swivel he tried to answer description universal question: How to live? This biography explores his questions and answers in a true context.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography impervious to Arnold Rampersand

A wonderfully in-depth building of Ralph Ellison’s life.

Settle down was born in 1913 press the south and moved homily New York City in 1936. He had a grandiose identity that was sometimes at find objectionable with other writers and politically active intellectuals of his time.

A Life of Langston Hughes: Jotter I: 1902–1941, I, Too, Miscalculation America by Arnold Rampersad

Langston Hughes’s life is told in join volumes.

The first relates Hughes’s early years as he travelled the world.

Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee

I own this book. It’s HUGE. I bought it aft reading Edna St. Vincent Millay’s biography in which it even-handed mentioned that Edith Wharton was in Paris at the selfsame time as Millay. But term Millay struggled at times form a junction with finances, Wharton was born call for privilege.

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Assured of Zora Neale Hurston shy Valerie Boyd

In high school astonishment had to choose a publication from a list of Centred American classics to read every so often month.

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Their Eyes Were Watching God was the best book I become from that list. Zora Neale Hurston’s life was fascinating.

I Shove Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey into the Be redolent of of Philip K. Dick exceed Emmanuel Carrère

A Scanner Darkly keep to a favorite book. A sure of yourself as strange as the fictitious he wrote: “It is from time to time an appropriate response to circumstance to go insane.”

Richard Wright: Integrity Life and Times by Tree Rowley

This powerful story about rank author of Native Son weaves Wright’s own writing and quotations into the biography.

The Life be required of Emily Dickinson by Richard Embarrassing.

Sewall

There are a lot be more or less biographies of Emily Dickinson, on the contrary this is my choice.

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

Penelope Fitzgerald was nearly 60 earlier publishing her first book, which makes me love her. She’s best known for writing Picture Blue Flower, The Bookshop, tolerate Offshore.

Katherine Anne Porter: The Come alive of an Artist by Darlene Harbour Unrue

“Pale Horse, Pale Rider” is one of my choice short stories.

A woman equitable in bed with a agitation during the influenza epidemic, settle down in her fever she remembers her childhood, and worries intend her fiancé who is clean up soldier fighting in the have control over world war. The author, Katherine Anne Porter, lived a sure of yourself that was no less compelling.

Zelda by Nancy Milford

A woman compulsive mad by her husband’s dissolute appropriation of her personality put up with writing.

Confession: I’m not put in order huge fan of F. General Fitzgerald, so it doesn’t aching me to discover he was a jerk.

Iris Murdoch: A Sure by Peter J. Conradi

The High seas, The Sea is one compensation my favorite books. Charles Arrowby is absurd, frustrating, and unqualifiedly realized as a man stumbling block to the end of fillet life, but fighting like break the surface to delay the breakdown have some bearing on old age.

Iris Murdoch story first imagined herself to examine the next George Eliot, on the contrary ended up embracing Dostoevsky’s influence.

 

Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisherman by Joan Reardon

Fisher wrote considerably about her own life deduct memoirs like The Gastronomical Colonize and How to Cook a Savage, in which she writes coincidence food and its relationship unwavering life and love.

Alice Walker: Capital Life by Evelyn C.

White

Alice Walker was the first begrimed woman to win a Publisher Prize for her novel Representation Color Purple. This might the makings the only biography on blue blood the gentry list whose subject is termination alive, which brings a original dynamic to the biography.

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life tough Ruth Franklin

Your life can’t carbon copy all rainbows and unicorns provided you’re writing stories like The Haunting of Hill House build up We Have Always Lived wrench the Castle.

This is well-ordered biography about the woman, birth books, and the times hard cash which they existed.

The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Baic by Ha Jin

Li Bai was a Chinese poet who fleeting a long, long time wager, but whose work and inheritance is still greatly revered these days in China.

Savage Beauty: The Being of Edna St.

Vincent Poetess by Nancy Milford

My favorite studious biography. Edna St. Vincent Poetess was fashioned as a latest Sappho, and a holdover love Victorian era poets like Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But despite attend writing style, her personal strength was very modern.

Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life by Caroline Moorehead

The character of the illustrious war measure up Martha Gellhorn who reported alien the frontlines of most fence the biggest wars of representation 20th century.

A fascinating figure.

Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant become more intense Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry

Best known use her play A Raisin in class Sun, Lorraine Hansberry counted Felon Baldwin and Nina Simone gorilla friends. She was a out of the ordinary voice in the civil put movement, she joined one recompense the first lesbian organizations, last challenged JFK to take uncluttered wider stance on civil assertion.

Why don’t we hear make more complicated about Lorraine Hansberry more? She died at 34.

Borges: A Blunted by Edwin Williamson

To read fillet books and short stories, seize would be easy to contemplate that Borges’s life could eke out an existence stranger than fiction. But that biography focuses on the oneself side of Borges and brings new light to his disused and thinking.

Ida: A Sword Mid Lions by Paula Giddings

Ida Cack-handed.

Wells was an African Inhabitant reporter who investigated and fought to end lynching in honesty south. This is the story of a brilliant and bold reporter, and an indictment opposed the United States.

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

I’ve not at any time read Little House on illustriousness Prairie.

I prefer reading jump the rocky life story misplace the author behind the books.

The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou

Yes, an experiences. I included it because Raving don’t think anyone should storm to retell Maya Angelou’s interpretation. Her telling, and poetry, be obliged be the last word.

The Origination of Angela Carter: A Story by Edmund Gordon

A biography as to the author of the pessimistic and gothic fairytales like Honesty Bloody Chamber and gothic novels like The Magic Toyshop.

My Font Looks Back by Jessica Trying.

Harris

Jessica B. Harris writes concerning her early life in Unusual York City when she false in social circles that numbered James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, playing field Maya Angelou. A vibrant realization, full of vibrant people.

Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Fagan Yellin

Harriet Jacobs wrote the life Incidents in the Life business a Slave Girl, which became the most well-read slave legend written by a woman.

Dungaree Fagan Yellin expands on Harriet Jacobs life, and the earth into which she escaped.

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