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Biographies — page 26
1,257 public-domain biographies books, summarised. Page 26 of 27.
The Autobiography of Phineas Pett
Phineas Pett
These records offer an unvarnished, firsthand account of life and labor within the seventeenth-century English naval administration, detailing the high-stakes politics behind the construction of the King’s ships. They provide a rare window into the technical and personal struggles of a master shipwright navigating…
Frederick Chopin, as a Man and Musician
Frederick Niecks
The life of Frédéric Chopin is a study in the intersection of fragile genius and complex human connection. This biography meticulously documents the composer’s artistic evolution and his often-troubled personal history with clinical, grounded detail.
In the Footprints of Charles Lamb
Benjamin Ellis Martin
The gentle, melancholic figure of Charles Lamb emerges from these pages not as a static historical relic, but as a man defined by his deep attachments to London’s streets and his lifelong, sacrificial devotion to his sister.
Nicolaus of Damascus' life of Augustus
of Damascus Nicolaus
The life of the man who became Augustus is a story of calculated rise, familial loyalty, and the turbulent transition of Rome from a fractured republic to a singular empire.
Shakespeare the Boy: With Sketches of the Home and School Life, Games and Sports, Manners, Customs and Folk-lore of the Time
W. J. (William James) Rolfe
A portrait of Elizabethan life, this book reconstructs the world of a young William Shakespeare, grounding his formative years in the tangible details of 16th-century Warwickshire.
The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
This pioneering autobiography strips away the artifice of eighteenth-century memoir to expose the raw, unvarnished nerves of a man who felt the world far more deeply than he understood it. It stands as the foundational document of modern confessional writing.
The Soul of the Soldier: Sketches from the Western Battle-Front
Thomas Tiplady
In the mud and roar of the Western Front, a chaplain finds that the soul of the common soldier is revealed not in grand speeches, but in the quiet endurance of life’s most profound trials.
Seventy Years Among Savages
Henry S. Salt
A memoir of moral awakening, this work chronicles seventy years spent observing a society that mistakes its own lingering cruelties for the height of progress.
The Iron Puddler: My Life in the Rolling Mills and What Came of It
James J. (James John) Davis
This memoir documents a rise from the blistering, manual labor of a Welsh-immigrant steelworker to the heights of the United States Cabinet. It serves as a gritty, unapologetic testament to the American work ethic, individual responsibility, and the transformative power of fraternal solidarity.
William Harvey and the Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood
Thomas Henry Huxley
A rigorous examination of how intellectual honesty and experimental method transformed our understanding of the human body, tracing the life and monumental achievement of the man who discovered the circulation of the blood.
Great Indian Chief of the West
Benjamin Drake
The Sauk leader Black Hawk defends his ancestral home in a final, doomed struggle against American expansion, navigating a landscape of broken treaties, colonial encroachment, and the slow erasure of his people's way of life.
Looking Back: An Autobiography
Merrick Abner Richardson
HOOK This memoir defies easy categorization, weaving together local color, personal history, and a radical, reimagined narrative of Mary Magdalene to argue that the spiritual world is as tangible as the material.
My Days of Adventure: The Fall of France, 1870-71
Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
A young man’s coming-of-age collides with the collapse of an empire, offering a vivid, ground-level witness to the birth of modern warfare. This memoir captures the chaotic transition from the pomp of the Second Empire to the desperate, shivering reality of the "People's War.
![Cover of The True George Washington [10th Ed.]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/the-true-george-washington-10th-ed-paul-leicester-ford.webp)
The True George Washington [10th Ed.]
Paul Leicester Ford
The man behind the monument emerges here as a flawed, hardworking, and intensely private figure whose life was defined by duty rather than myth. This biography peels away the layers of legendary perfection to reveal a human being navigating the complexities of an evolving nation.
Charles Gounod: Autobiographical Reminiscences with Family Letters and Notes on Music
Charles Gounod
This collection of memories offers an intimate, reflective portrait of a nineteenth-century composer navigating the tension between artistic calling and the demands of a changing world. It serves as both a personal history and a meditation on the nature of creative life.
Louis XIV and La Grande Mademoiselle, 1652-1693
Arvède Barine
The Bourbon dynasty’s most powerful monarch meets his match in a cousin who expects a grand romance, only to find herself trapped in a world of stifling ceremony and heartbreak.
Records of Later Life
Fanny Kemble
An aristocratic British actress marries into American society, only to find herself torn between two continents, caught in the crossfire of anti-slavery agitation, and forced back onto the stage to secure her own financial independence.
Wounded and a Prisoner of War, by an Exchanged Officer
Malcolm V. (Malcolm Vivian) Hay
A raw, unflinching account of a British officer’s descent from the front lines into the grim reality of a prisoner-of-war camp, written with a sharp eye for the quiet tragedies of the Great War.
All in a Life-time
Henry Morgenthau
A self-made titan of industry looks back from the twilight of his years, weaving a narrative that traces a personal journey from a quiet German childhood to the high-stakes corridors of global diplomacy.
Anna Seward, and Classic Lichfield
Stapleton Martin
Lichfield’s eighteenth-century literary scene found its center in the Episcopal Palace, where a poetess once reigned as the acknowledged queen of her circle. This work reconstructs the life and social world of that formidable figure.
Great Singers, First Series: Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag
George T. (George Titus) Ferris
This survey of operatic luminaries captures the vanished era of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century stage, tracing the lives of women who commanded the adoration of kings and the devotion of audiences across Europe.
Literary Celebrities of the English Lake-District
Frederick Sessions
This collection of biographical sketches gathers the scattered threads of a literary landscape, offering a window into the lives and minds of the writers who found their inspiration among the peaks and valleys of the English Lake District.
Mary Lamb
Anne (Anne Burrows) Gilchrist
This biography offers an intimate, compassionate portrait of a writer whose brilliance was inseparable from the crushing weight of her mental illness and the lifelong devotion of her brother.
My War Experiences in Two Continents
S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
A woman of deep reserves and sharp observation leaves the comforts of London to confront the visceral reality of a world at war. She finds herself not in the halls of power, but in the mud of the front.
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews with Former Slaves, Volume IX, Mississippi Narratives
United States. Work Projects Administration
These direct testimonies from former enslaved people in Mississippi record the lived textures of bondage, the upheaval of emancipation, and the complex realities of life in the post-Civil War South.
Some Reminiscences
Joseph Conrad
A master of the sea and the pen reveals the origins of his dual life, reflecting on how a sailor becomes a writer and how the right word can alter the world.
The Memoirs of Charles-Lewis, Baron de Pollnitz, Volume I: Being the Observations He Made in His Late Travels from Prussia thro' Germany, Italy, France, Flanders, Holland, England, &C. in Letters to His Friend. Discovering Not Only the Present State of the Chief Cities and Towns
Pöllnitz, Karl Ludwig, Freiherr von
A refined, wandering nobleman offers an intimate look at the shifting political alliances and private lives of eighteenth-century European courts, blending travelogue with the sharp-eyed gossip of a seasoned insider.
War Days in Brittany
Elsie Deming Jarves
The Great War is a tragedy of blood and iron, yet in the quiet corners of Brittany, it reveals a resilient humanity that refuses to be extinguished by the shadow of the trenches.
A Lady of England: The Life and Letters of Charlotte Maria Tucker
Agnes Giberne
A clever, spirited English woman resolves in girlhood to overcome her plain looks through goodwill, only to reinvent herself in middle age as a prolific author and intrepid missionary in northern India. <Image alt="Portrait of Charlotte Maria Tucker" caption="Charlotte Maria Tucker (A. L. O. E.)"…
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 12: American Leaders
John Lord
Great leaders do not shape history in a vacuum; they are forged by the fierce economic, legal, and regional friction of their eras.
Kepler
Walter W. (Walter William) Bryant
A visionary mathematician battles financial ruin, dogma, and his own bizarre superstitions to unlock the fundamental, elegant laws governing planetary motion.
Recollections of My Youth
Ernest Renan
A quiet bell tolls from a submerged city beneath the Breton tides, calling a lost soul back to a faith he can no longer hold.
The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) Volume II
Theophilus Cibber
A collection of literary portraits reveals how the brilliant, flawed poets of Great Britain navigating political turmoil, poverty, and personal ambition shaped a nation’s dramatic and poetic history.
A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium
Hugh Gibson
An American diplomat in occupied Brussels records the sudden collapse of European peace, documenting war through official cablegrams, refugee corridors, and the quiet courage of a captive city.
In the Russian Ranks: A Soldier's Account of the Fighting in Poland
John Morse
A quiet holiday transformed into a brutal struggle for survival when an English civilian found himself trapped on the Eastern Front, taking up arms with the Tsar's army to fight his way across the bloodied fields of Poland.
Life in the Clearings versus the Bush
Susanna Moodie
Moving beyond her grueling early years on the Canadian frontier, a mature settler documents the remarkable growth of young towns, civic institutions, and social life as backwoods wilderness yields to thriving civilization.
London Days: A Book of Reminiscences
Arthur Warren
An eighteen-year-old American arrives in late-Victorian London and spends decades absorbing its glittering social, political, and cultural circles before capturing the era's grandest personalities in sharp, affectionate detail.
My Wonderful Visit
Charlie Chaplin
A famous comedian escapes his grueling Hollywood routine for a European holiday, only to find that his immense global fame follows him every step of the way.
The Journal of Lieut. John L. Hardenbergh of the Second New York Continental Regiment from May 1 to October 3, 1779, in General Sullivan's Campaign Against the Western Indians: With an Introduction, Copious Historical Notes, and Maps of the Battle-field of Newtown and Groveland Ambuscade
John Leonard Hardenbergh
A direct military record from the heart of the American Revolution, this campaign journal captures the precise daily realities of a scorched-earth expedition across the wilderness of eighteenth-century New York.
The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II
Dundonald, Thomas Barnes Cochrane, Earl of
Betrayed by his native land, a brilliant British naval commander takes up the cause of Greek independence, fights for his personal vindication, and dedicates his final years to mechanical innovation.
The Loves of Great Composers
Gustav Kobbé
Behind the grand symphonies and immortal melodies of Western classical music lie intensely human stories of devotion, sacrifice, and domestic companionability.
James Geikie, the Man and the Geologist
Marion I. (Marion Isabel) Newbigin
From grueling, snowy field surveys across Scotland to international debates over ancient ice ages, a dedicated scientist shapes modern geology while maintaining a lively, warmhearted devotion to family, students, and literature.
Kemps Nine Daies Wonder: Performed in a Daunce from London to Norwich
Kemp, William, active 1600
A famous comic actor dances his way across the English countryside, turning an eccentric endurance stunt into a celebrated spectacle of early modern popular culture.
On the Stage--and Off: The Brief Career of a Would-Be Actor
Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka) Jerome
A young man steps toward the spotlight only to find the theater a place of cracked paint, empty pockets, and grand illusions.
Studies in Contemporary Biography
Bryce, James Bryce, Viscount
Intimate personal acquaintance reveals the mind and character behind the public deeds of Victorian England's most influential figures.
A Ball Player's Career: Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson
Adrian C. (Adrian Constantine) Anson
An early star recounts his frontier upbringing, his rise to fame on the diamond, and the global travels that defined the origins of professional baseball.
My Country
Marie, Queen, consort of Ferdinand I, King of Romania
A royal transplant learns to love a vast, dusty realm of silent plains, carved stone crosses, and centuries of quiet endurance.
My Father as I Recall Him
Mamie Dickens
A daughter offers a gentle, affectionate portrait of her famous father in his private domestic realm, capturing his boundless energy, quiet writing habits, and warmth among his children, pets, and friends.