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Biographies — page 30
2,563 public-domain biographies books, summarised. Page 30 of 54.

Charles Darwin and the Theory of Natural Selection
Poulton, Edward Bagnall, Sir
A quiet Cambridge student leaves his room to collect beetles, sails around the globe, and gradually reconstructs humanity's understanding of how all living things adapt, diversify, and survive.

Matthew Arnold
George Saintsbury
A disciplined critical mind measures a prominent Victorian author against his own strict standards of literary, social, and spiritual judgment.

Round the World
Andrew Carnegie
A industrialist closes his desk to circle the globe, measuring human progress not by monuments, but by how each culture lives, works, and governs.

Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers, Volume 1
Leigh Hunt
An passionate Nineteenth-century critic leads uninitiated English readers through the wild, grand fables of Italian epic poetry with rigorous commentary and prose adaptations.

The Genius of Scotland
Robert Turnbull
Amid shadowy glens, misty crags, and ancient ruins, a nation's soul reveals itself through its sacred songs, rugged landscape, and enduring heroic faith.

The Story of General Gordon
Jean Lang
A life measured not by titles or self-preservation, but by total devotion to duty, single-minded faith, and absolute fearlessness in the face of impossible odds.

Chancellorsville and Gettysburg: Campaigns of the Civil War - VI
Abner Doubleday
A veteran commander pulls back the curtain on the pivotal battles of the Civil War, revealing how miscommunications, stubbornness, and raw human courage reshaped a fractured nation.

Dr. John McLoughlin, the Father of Oregon
Frederick V. Holman
A formidable fur trader turns benefactor, extending mercy to American pioneers only to face bitter political betrayal in his final years.

Elizabeth Gilbert and Her Work for the Blind
Frances Martin
Lost sight as a young child, a bishop’s daughter transforms her private isolation into a public movement, establishing workshops and self-sustaining trades that rescue the British blind from enforced begging and institutional neglect.

From Slave to College President: Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington
G. Holden (Godfrey Holden) Pike
Born into the soul-crushing despair of Southern plantation slavery, an ambitious boy rises against staggering odds to become a transformational pioneer of industrial education and a world-renowned leader for his people.

La Grande Mademoiselle, 1627-1652
Arvède Barine
Born into the peak of French royal opulence, an adventurous princess seeks glory and self-determination in a world pivoting toward total monarchy, only to find herself cast out when the political tides finally turn against her.

Saint Bonaventure: The Seraphic Doctor Minister-General of the Franciscan Order
Laurence Costelloe
A fragile child saved by a saint’s prayer grows into one of the medieval Church’s formidable intellectual and administrative giants.

Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromartie, Knight
John Willcock
An eccentric Scottish polymath spends a lifetime defending his ancient ancestral heritage, writing wild baroque prose, and fighting for a doomed royalist cause.

Sketches From My Life: By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha
Augustus Charles Hobart-Hampden
A rogue Royal Navy officer turned blockade-runner and Ottoman grand admiral recounts a life lived entirely on the high seas and at the edge of danger.

St. Nicholas v. 13 No. 9 July 1886: An Illustrated Magazine for Young Folks
Various
An energetic tapestry of late-nineteenth-century youth culture, this collection combines historical biography, adventurous serial fiction, outdoor instructional guides, and playful reader contributions.

The History of the Catnach Press: at Berwick-Upon-Tweed, Alnwick and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, in Northumberland, and Seven Dials, London
Charles Hindley
An empire of cheap paper, ink, and street songs once ruled the imagination of nineteenth-century Britain from a squalid corner of London.
Beacon Lights of History, Volume 02: Jewish Heroes and Prophets
John Lord
From ancient sands to European ports, a visionary line of spiritual pioneers confronts polytheism, social decay, and tyrannical rulers, forging an enduring ethical monotheism through sacrifice, law, and steadfast faith against the tide of worldliness.

Eccentricities of genius
James B. (James Burton) Pond
Behind the curtain of North America's nineteenth-century lecture halls, a single impresario manages the triumphs, tantrums, and logistical chaos of the era's greatest cultural icons.

From Farm House to the White House: The life of George Washington, his boyhood, youth, manhood, public and private life and services
William Makepeace Thayer
An early lesson in self-restraint and moral duty shapes a young Virginian into the steady, unyielding leader who secures a new republic.

Index of the Project Gutenberg Works of Robert Browning
Robert Browning
A master map to an extraordinary poetic landscape, this detailed structural directory charts every verse, dramatic monologue, and biographical study composing the digital legacy of a Victorian master.

Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 1: With His Letters and Journals
Thomas Moore
A youth marked by fiery pride, physical infirmity, and sudden aristocratic status transforms into an restless traveller whose letters and verse capture the spirit of an entire age.

Martin Luther
Carl E. Koppenhaver
A fearful world ruled by superstition and the threat of divine wrath gives way to a life of quiet academic study, sudden spiritual terror, and an unshakeable conviction born in a monk's cell.

The Life of John Bunyan
Edmund Venables
HOOK Born to a traveling tinker in an age of revolution, John Bunyan emerged from the crucible of personal despair and long-term imprisonment to become one of the most enduring voices in the English language.

The Opium Habit
Horace B. Day
A harrowing nineteenth-century collection of personal narratives and medical reflections reveals how a ubiquitous remedy turns into an insurmountable physical trap.

Claverhouse
Mowbray Morris
A career soldier returns to a divided homeland, where enforcing a rigid regime's decrees earns him enduring infamy as a ruthless oppressor, until a final, desperate gamble transforms him into a fallen hero of romance.

Karl Marx
Achille Loria
A privileged scholar breaks with his class to forge a revolutionary critique of wealth, tracing how capital exploits human effort and setting the stage for global social upheaval.

Life of John Knox, Fifth Edition, Vol. 2 of 2: Containing Illustrations of the History of the Reformation in Scotland
Thomas M'Crie
A fierce religious transformation transforms a kingdom as an uncompromising preacher confronts monarchs, councils, and assassins to establish a reformed church.

Personal Recollections and Civil War Diary, 1864
Lemuel Abijah Abbott
Daily life under fire transformed a young soldier into a seasoned leader. Written in the immediate heat of campaign trails and hospital stays, this authentic Civil War journal records the grueling, unvarnished realities of front-line infantry command.

Personal sketches of his own times, Vol. 1 (of 3)
Barrington, Jonah, Sir
A vivid window into eighteenth-century Ireland, where fierce duels, runaway revels, and razor-sharp courtroom wit define a lost world of political and social madness.

The Black-Bearded Barbarian
Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
George Leslie Mackay's fiery determination turns a distant island of hostile stranger-towns into a lifelong home where faith breaks open stubborn hearts.

The Chief Engineer
Henry Abbott
An observant woodsman tracks the return of the Adirondack beaver, documenting the life, clever engineering, and mischievous persistence of a single wild matriarch-builder across nearly two decades of wilderness excursions.

Frederick William Maitland, Downing Professor of the Laws of England: A Biographical Sketch
H. A. L. (Herbert Albert Laurens) Fisher
A mind of extraordinary subtlety and quickness turns its gaze upon the dusty, forgotten foundations of English law.

Lachmi Bai, Rani of Jhansi: The Jeanne D'Arc of India
Michael White
A young queen in rebel India rides into battle to reclaim her state, surrounded by schemers, traitors, and the advancing British army.

The Herschels and Modern Astronomy
Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
A single family transformed human understanding of the heavens, mapping the structure of the cosmos using self-made instruments and unmatched personal devotion.

A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Volume 4, part 2: John Tyler
Unknown
An executive’s direct dispatches from the precipice of continental expansion reveal a young republic wrestling with the legal mechanics of its own growth.

A Woman's Experiences in the Great War
Louise Mack
A lone Australian journalist plunges into war-torn Belgium, facing bombs, retreating armies, and German lines to bear witness to a shattered world.

Far Away and Long Ago: A History of My Early Life
W. H. (William Henry) Hudson
A young boy’s soul wakes up on the limitless Argentine pampas, where every blossom, bird-song, and wild beast kindles a lifelong wonder that no hardship can extinguish.

Recollections of full years
Helen Herron Taft
A vibrant, eye-level view of American power at the dawn of its global role, told by a woman who helped shape it from Ohio to Manila to the Executive Mansion.
The Black Watch at Ticonderoga and Major Duncan Campbell of Inverawe
Frederick B. Richards
Highland courage meets colonial tragedy in a meticulous, document-driven history of the 42nd Royal Highland Regiment during the French and Indian War.

The Boyhood of Great Inventors
A. Fraser Robertson
A boy sits by a hearth observing a kettle, or wanders a rocky coastline collecting stone samples; from these small, quiet sparks of early curiosity emerge the engines, statues, and light-houses that shape the modern world.

The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran: Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of
Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister
A portrait of Ireland's early monastic spirit, where ordinary farmsteads, sacred fires, and wild wolves shift under the touch of the miraculous.

The Sunny Side of the Street
Marshall P. (Marshall Pinckney) Wilder
A warm, observant spirit sees the humor in human nature and invites the reader to walk where the sun shines brightest.

Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey
Washington Irving
A pilgrimage to the homes of two giant literary figures reveals how landscapes, legends, and everyday acquaintances shape the enduring romance of early nineteenth-century authorial imagination.

Autobiography of a Child
Hannah Lynch
A neglected child’s fiery spirit turns systemic cruelty and maternal coldness into an unyielding quest for independence and self-worth.

Life in an Indian Outpost
Gordon Casserly
A solitary British officer watches from a mountain pass as the wild Himalayan forest meets the border of Bhutan. Beyond the isolated garrison lies an expanse of dense jungle, rogue elephants, and the quiet tensions of empire.

Solomon Maimon: An Autobiography
Solomon Maimon
An impoverished Polish boy learns to decipher the world beyond his closed community, trading strict orthodoxy for philosophy and embarking on a relentless, perilous quest for intellectual freedom.

The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Driven by an exacting desire to lay bare every corner of his character, a solitary philosopher chronicles his triumphs, absurd moral failings, and deep persecution anxieties with unsparing candor.

The Life of Lyman Trumbull
Horace White
A definitive, intimate portrait of Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull reveals the legal intellect that shaped Civil War legislation, navigated Reconstruction, and stood against executive overreach.