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Biographies — page 46
3,283 public-domain biographies books, summarised. Page 46 of 69.
Eminent doctors: Their lives and their work
G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
A rigorous historical survey reveals how British medical science emerged from medieval superstition through the steady, unglamorous labor of passionate observation and physical dissection.
From Boniface to Bank Burglar
George M. (George Miles) White
A hotelkeeper turned burglar crafts an unsparing record of 19th-century American bank heists, official corruption, and the steep cost of a life outside the law.
Indian Biography; Vol. 2 (of 2)
B. B. (Benjamin Bussey) Thatcher
A quiet battle for historical truth runs through this book. Benjamin Bussey Thatcher reconstructs the lives of native leaders who shaped North America, resisting both colonial mythmaking and the easy erasure of indigenous sovereignty.
Mrs. Siddons
Nina H. Kennard
A girl born to a troupe of wandering actors climbs through poverty, harsh rejections, and punishing tours to become the undisputed queen of English tragedy.
My Private Menagerie: from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19
Théophile Gautier
When the young French Romantic writer Théophile Gautier took in his first pets, he could not have anticipated that his Paris home would eventually harbor generations of cats, performing dogs, and carriage horses.
Old Friends at Cambridge and Elsewhere
John Willis Clark
Behind the solemn facades of nineteenth-century Cambridge, brilliant minds bickered over college rules, mapped the stars, translated ancient texts, and built the intellectual foundations of the modern world.
Old Plantation Days: Being Recollections of Southern Life Before the Civil War
N. B. (Nancy Bostick) De Saussure
A quiet home, a vast network of fields, and an entire social order dissolve almost overnight into flight, smoke, and memory.
Roger Williams, Prophet and Pioneer of Soul-Liberty
Arthur Barsazou Strickland
A stubborn Puritan minister is banished into a freezing wilderness, only to transform his exile into the founding vision of American religious freedom.
Stirring Incidents in the Life of a British Soldier: An Autobiography
Faughnan, Thomas, active 1835-1883
Enlisting into the ranks of the British Army, a working-class Irishman leaves behind rural hardship to spend decades marching, sailing, and fighting across the globe in service of the Empire.
The Marx He Knew
John Spargo
A reverent old cigarmaker passes down the unwritten history of socialism's foundational theorist through the intimate memories of a lifelong friendship.
Thirty Years in Australia
Ada Cambridge
A quiet domestic intimacy illuminates this thirty-year journey across a rapidly changing young nation.
Fénelon: The Mystic
James Mudge
An exploration of divine love, high-minded devotion, and ecclesiastical intrigue, this portrait traces how a gentle seventeenth-century archbishop maintained an unshakeable inner peace through exile, bitter theological warfare, and the shifting favors of the French crown.
Historic Girlhoods, Part One
Rupert Sargent Holland
These stories follow historical records to trace how ten young girls—from medieval saints to London authors—navigated the expectations, perils, and ambitions of their youth to become influential women.
McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 3, February 1896
Various
A vibrant cross-section of late nineteenth-century culture, this issue captures an era when high literary ambition and popular journalism marched side by side.
My past and thoughts, vol. 4 (of 6)
Aleksandr Herzen
In exile, a human soul loses its quiet anchor, and every private grief is amplified by the storms of a collapsing continent.
Sketches of the Christian life and public labors of William Miller
James White
A plain, hardworking farmer finds himself transformed into a polarizing religious figure, convinced by his own rigorous study of the Bible that the world is nearing its final, cataclysmic end.
Ten Years' Exile: Memoirs of That Interesting Period of the Life of the Baroness De Stael-Holstein, Written by Herself, during the Years 1810, 1811, 1812, and 1813, and Now First Published from the Original Manuscript, by Her Son
Madame de (Anne-Louise-Germaine) Staël
An unrelenting tyrant transforms a world-famous woman of letters into a fugitive across a continent on the brink of total war.
A Political Diary, 1828-1830, Volume II
Ellenborough, Edward Law, Earl of
A nation's cabinet room becomes a arena of quiet desperation as an empire struggles to hold its footing against domestic unrest and continental collapse.
A Soldier's Life: Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle
Edwin George Rundle
A plain soldier’s account of life under the British flag offers an unforgettable glimpse into the raw, unglamorized realities of nineteenth-century imperial service.
Pope Pius the Tenth
F. A. (Frances Alice) Forbes
Born in a humble Italian village, a postman’s gifted son rises through every level of the Catholic priesthood to become Pope Pius X, remaining a plain, uncompromising shepherd even while confronting global political strife and modern theological crisis.
Ruysbroeck
Evelyn Underhill
An extraordinary inner journey unfolds as a brilliant, wayward child transforms through shared austerity and deep contemplation into one of Christendom’s most vital spiritual voices.
The Bay State Monthly
Various
Colonial roots, public service, and local industrial ambition converge in a rich tapestry of New England history.
The Collected Writings of Dougal Graham, "Skellat" Bellman of Glasgow, Vol. 1 of 2
Dougal Graham
A rhyming pedlar marches alongside Prince Charlie’s ragged host, recording the blood, blunder, and desperate flight of the Forty-five through a local crier's unvarnished eye.
Coleridge
S. L. (Samuel Levy) Bensusan
A brilliant mind yields to fragile willpower, leaving behind exquisite fragments of poetry and an enduring tragedy of wasted potential.
Further memories
Redesdale, Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford, Baron
Reflections from a quiet Cotswold bamboo grove open outward into vivid recollections of Eastern traditions, European high politics, and artistic brilliance.
Letters of Felix Mendelssohn to Ignaz and Charlotte Moscheles
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
An intimate, lifelong dialogue in ink traces the bright rise and quiet, untimely twilight of a nineteenth-century musical genius. Through candid correspondence, two masters share the triumphs, exhaustion, and domestic quiet that shaped classical music's romantic age.
Memoirs of Dr. Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley
An indefatigable seeker of truth transforms open inquiry into scientific discovery, enduring political persecution to defend civil liberty and rational faith across two continents.
Reminiscences of Prince Talleyrand, Volume 2 (of 2)
Colmache, M., active 19th century
A single room can hold both the collapse of a kingdom and the quiet arithmetic of its survival. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord moves through decades of French upheaval with a soft voice, a cold mind, and an eye for the human weak points that undo empires.
The Eureka Stockade
Raffaello Carboni
This is a raw, urgent, and fiercely personal eyewitness account of the 1854 Eureka Stockade, one of the defining moments in Australian colonial history. It captures the spirit of a rebellion born of injustice, written by a man who stood in the barricades and lived to tell the tale.
The Gallery of Portraits: with Memoirs. Volume 7 (of 7)
Arthur Thomas Malkin
An expansive gallery of historical figures comes to life through rigorous biographical sketches, capturing the delicate intersection of individual character, intellect, and public duty.
The voyage of the "Deutschland"
Paul König
Under the shadow of a world war, an unarmed commercial submarine slips through enemy blockades, risking the deep Atlantic to open a secret trade route between nations.
Biographical Essays
Thomas De Quincey
Sharp biographical insight cuts through centuries of literary myth to expose the human lives behind iconic masterworks.
Egerton Ryerson and Education in Upper Canada
J. Harold (John Harold) Putman
This examination of Ontario’s formative educational legislation traces how a determined reformer navigated political volatility to construct a standardized, public school system from a fractured and inequitable colonial landscape.
Isaac T. Hopper: A True Life
Lydia Maria Child
A quiet Quaker tailor turns his Philadelphia and New York homes into battlegrounds for human freedom, confounding slave catchers and reforming convicts through sheer nerve and quick wit.
R. L. Stevenson
Frank Swinnerton
This critical study offers a bracing, unsentimental reassessment of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life and work, stripping away the mythology of the "beloved invalid" to inspect the actual craftsmanship of his varied literary output.
The Diary of a Girl in France in 1821
Mary Browne
The world of 1821 unfolds through the eyes of a young traveler whose sharp, unvarnished observations capture the vivid, often jarring, contrasts between the expectations of an English girl and the gritty reality of post-Napoleonic France.
Thomas Hariot, the Mathematician, the Philosopher and the Scholar
Henry Stevens
A meticulous recovery of a forgotten genius, this biography pulls an Elizabethan pioneer out of the shadows of his more famous contemporaries.
Cesare Lombroso, a modern man of science
Hans Kurella
A pioneer of criminal anthropology, this scientist sought the biological origins of human transgression, forever altering our understanding of the link between the body and the law.
Confessions of a Neurasthenic
William Taylor Marrs
The life of a man perpetually convinced of his own impending demise, this memoir documents a journey through the absurdities of health-seeking, chronic indecision, and the ever-shifting landscape of early 20th-century medical fads.
Introduction to the Compleat Angler
Andrew Lang
A portrait of a man who found in the simple act of fishing a quiet, enduring philosophy of life, transcending the turbulent politics of his seventeenth-century world.
John Black, the Apostle of the Red River
George Bryce
This biography chronicles the life of John Black, a devoted Presbyterian missionary who became the foundational spiritual leader for the remote Scottish settlers on the Canadian prairies. It is a portrait of quiet, persistent duty in a harsh, emerging frontier.
Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character of William H. F. Lee (A Representative from Virginia): Delivered in the House of Representatives and in the Senate
Various
This formal collection of congressional tributes serves as a solemn, public record of a life defined by the transition from military command in the American Civil War to quiet, diligent service in the halls of the United States government. It documents the collective esteem held by colleagues for a man who…
Samuel Reynolds House of Siam, pioneer medical missionary, 1847-1876
George Haws Feltus
A portrait of endurance and quiet devotion, this chronicle follows a pioneer medical missionary’s decades of labor in mid-nineteenth-century Siam, capturing both the rigors of the field and the evolution of a cross-cultural life.
The Flower-Patch Among the Hills
Flora Klickmann
The restorative power of a humble country cottage offers a refuge for three friends seeking sanctuary from the stresses of early twentieth-century life. Amidst the shifting seasons, they find that true peace is often hidden in the smallest, most familiar details of home.
Four American poets
Sherwin Cody
These biographical portraits capture the formative experiences and steady character of four pillars of American letters, presenting their lives as inspiring models of citizenship and enduring literary craft.
Marital Power Exemplified in Mrs. Packard's Trial, and Self-Defence from the Charge of Insanity
E. P. W. (Elizabeth Parsons Ware) Packard
A woman’s intellectual independence is branded as madness in this harrowing account of wrongful imprisonment. The narrative serves as both a personal memoir and a potent legal call for the rights of married women.
Observations of an Orderly: Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital
Ward Muir
The mundane machinery of a wartime hospital reveals the quiet resilience of ordinary men thrust into extraordinary circumstances. These sketches capture the daily labor behind the front lines with unsentimental honesty.
The 125th Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry: Attention Batallion!
Robert M. Rogers
This chronicle captures the transformation of a green regiment into a hardened fighting force, documenting their long, grueling path from Illinois to the final marches of the American Civil War.