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Biographies — page 55
2,670 public-domain biographies books, summarised. Page 55 of 56.

The Song of the Rappahannock: Sketches of the Civil War
Ira Seymour Dodd
The Civil War is often remembered through the grand movements of armies and the decisions of generals, yet its true character resided in the personal ordeals of the young men who filled the ranks.

A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents. Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement
Theodore Roosevelt
This volume serves as a primary historical record, documenting the transition of the American executive into the twentieth century through the official papers, messages, and administrative proclamations of a seminal political era.

Abraham Lincoln: The Practical Mystic
Francis Grierson
A portrait of a legendary leader, this exploration reframes a familiar historical figure not as a mere politician, but as an intuitive force guided by powers beyond the visible world.

Adventures and Reminiscences of a Volunteer
George T. Ulmer
A young boy’s persistent, irrepressible desire to serve his country leads him from a ragged childhood in New York to the muddy, dangerous front lines of the American Civil War.

Beyond the Marne: Quincy, Huiry, Voisins before and during the battle
Henriette Cuvru-Magot
This diary captures the intimate, harrowing silence of a French village caught in the path of the German advance toward Paris in 1914. It is a quiet testament to the endurance of those who remained behind when the world seemed to be ending.

Bill Porter
Upton Sinclair
A captive writer transforms the misery of his prison term into the vivid, bittersweet tales that would define his legacy as a voice for the forgotten. This play dramatizes the intersection of art, survival, and the shadows of the past.

From Lower Deck to Pulpit
Henry Cowling
This memoir recounts a journey from the harsh discipline of the Victorian-era Royal Navy to the pulpit of a Baptist church, revealing how a young boy’s early yearning for ministry survived years of sea-hardened adversity.

John Cheap, the Chapman's Library. Vol. 2: Religious and Scriptural: The Scottish Chap Literature of Last Century, Classified
Dougal Graham
This collection revives the rugged, urgent voice of 18th-century Scotland, preserving the spiritual anxieties and heroic narratives that once filled the pockets and hearths of a pious, hard-pressed people. It functions as a portable monument to a vanishing world of faith and folklore.

Life of Luther
Julius Köstlin
The legacy of the German Reformation rests upon the shoulders of a man whose inner turbulence transformed the religious and political landscape of Europe. This account maps the evolution of a monk into a defiant revolutionary.

Memoir of John Howe Peyton: in sketches by his contemporaries, together with some of his public and private letters, etc., also a sketch of Ann M. Peyton
Unknown
A testament to a lost era of Virginia legal giants, this collection gathers the tributes and private correspondence of a man whose reputation survives not through his own writings, but through the enduring awe of his peers.

Memoirs of a Veteran Who Served as a Private in the 60's in the War Between the States: Personal Incidents, Experiences and Observations
I. (Isaac) Hermann
This memoir offers an unvarnished, boots-on-the-ground perspective of a Confederate soldier navigating the chaos of the American Civil War and its immediate, turbulent aftermath.

Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave. Second Edition
William Wells Brown
The North Star is the only compass that matters when the path to freedom lies across a landscape of chains, whips, and legally sanctioned brutality.

The Bay State Monthly
Various
This collection serves as a vibrant, multifaceted portrait of Massachusetts in the late 19th century, offering readers a glimpse into the historical, political, and cultural currents that shaped New England’s identity during the 1880s.

The Dispatch Carrier and Memoirs of Andersonville Prison
William N. (William Nelson) Tyler
A Union soldier recounts the harrowing transition from the life of a mobile dispatch carrier to the starvation and struggle for survival within the walls of Andersonville Prison.

The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova de Seingalt, 1725-1798. Volume 05: Milan and Mantua
Giacomo Casanova
A restless young man maneuvers through the high-stakes games and hidden dangers of 18th-century Italy, driven by an unquenchable thirst for fortune, intrigue, and the favors of beautiful women.

Widger's Quotations from Project Gutenberg Edition of The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The life of a man who feels everything is a record of both profound connection and profound alienation. This narrative maps the internal landscape of a singular mind, tracing the development of a soul from childhood vulnerability to the burdens of public fame.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 71, No. 436, February 1852
Various
This collection captures the mid-nineteenth-century spirit through a blend of rigorous historical biography, serialized fiction, and urgent political commentary on the state of the British Empire.

Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3), Essay 10: Auguste Comte
John Morley
Auguste Comte emerges as a figure of singular intellectual intensity, a man whose ambition to reorganize society through scientific rigor led him from brilliant sociological insights to the creation of a rigid, secular religion.

Fifty Years of Public Service: Personal Recollections of Shelby M. Cullom, Senior United States Senator from Illinois
Shelby M. (Shelby Moore) Cullom
A seasoned statesman recounts fifty years of political shifts, spanning the rise of the Republican Party, the Civil War, and the emergence of the United States as a global power.

My German Prisons: Being the Experiences of an Officer During Two and a Half Years as a Prisoner of War
Horace Gray Gilliland
HOOK A vivid, firsthand account of two and a half years held captive in Germany during the Great War, detailing the relentless struggle for survival and the desperate, high-stakes quest for freedom.

My Three Years in a German Prison
Henri Béland
The Great War began as a distant rumble of news in the Pyrenees and transformed into a three-year crucible of confinement for a Canadian physician trapped behind enemy lines.

Ten Years and Ten Months in Lunatic Asylums in Different States
Moses Swan
To endure silence for a decade is a heavy burden, yet to document the brutality of those years is an act of fierce, necessary defiance. This account serves as both a harrowing testimony and a desperate plea for reform.

The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2
Various
This magazine issue offers a panoramic view of nineteenth-century New England, blending industrial biography, regional travelogues, and literary history into a portrait of a society deeply rooted in its own past.

The Mentor: Makers of Modern Opera, Vol. 1, Num. 47, Serial No. 47
Henry Edward Krehbiel
Born from a scholarly attempt to recreate the power of Greek drama, modern opera evolved into a global language of melody and realism that continues to define the musical stage.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 20, No. 568, September 29, 1832
Various
This compendium of nineteenth-century curiosity serves as a vibrant microcosm of the Victorian-era appetite for knowledge, blending biographical sketches, scientific inquiry, and historical anecdote into a single, accessible package.

The War Stories of Private Thomas Atkins
James Milne
This book is a collection of firsthand accounts from British soldiers serving on the front lines of the First World War. Through their own letters home, these men document the brutal, absurd, and deeply human realities of life in the trenches, from the terror of artillery fire to the simple joy of a shared meal. It…

A Garden Diary, September 1899—September 1900
Emily Lawless
The quiet observation of a single garden becomes a lens for understanding both the natural world and the vast, unsettling movements of history. Within these pages, the humblest plot of earth reflects the human condition.

Mutiny Memoirs: Being Personal Reminiscences of the Great Sepoy Revolt of 1857
A. R. D. (Alfred Robert Davidson) Mackenzie
The Great Sepoy Revolt of 1857 remains one of the most transformative and harrowing episodes in the history of British India. Written by a young cavalry subaltern who lived through the upheaval, these memoirs offer an immediate, ground-level account of the conflict’s sudden start, the brutal siege of Delhi, and the…

My three years in Manipur
Ethel St. Clair Grimwood
The Residency at Manipur, once a garden oasis of polo and photography, becomes the site of a brutal political uprising, forcing a young woman to trade her quiet domestic life for a harrowing flight through the jungle.

The Life of Hugo Grotius: With Brief Minutes of the Civil, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of the Netherlands
Charles Butler
A life defined by the pursuit of intellectual liberty and international order, this account traces the remarkable trajectory of a jurist, scholar, and diplomat caught in the violent religious conflicts of the seventeenth-century Netherlands.

The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Volume 13: Grammarians and Rhetoricians
Suetonius
These brief, candid biographies capture the precarious lives of the scholars and teachers who shaped the intellectual foundation of Rome, often navigating the line between prestige and utter poverty.

The Red Rugs of Tarsus: A Woman's Record of the Armenian Massacre of 1909
Helen Davenport Gibbons
HOOK In the spring of 1909, an expectant mother trapped in the volatile heart of Armenia navigates a harrowing landscape of massacre and courage.

Trains of Recollection: Drawn from Fifty Years of Railway Service in Scotland and Canada, and told to Arthur Hawkes
D. B. (David Blyth) Hanna
A veteran railroader traces the rise of Canada’s transcontinental lines, blending personal memoir with the hard-won lessons of building a national system from the raw, open prairie.

A Memoir of Sir Edmund Andros, Knt.,: Governor of New England, New York and Virginia, &c., &c
William Henry Whitmore
A soldier and statesman who navigated the treacherous politics of the seventeenth-century British Empire, Edmund Andros served as a royal governor across three major American colonies despite being widely detested by his subjects.

An English woman-sergeant in the Serbian Army
Flora Sandes
An Englishwoman joins the Serbian Army during the Great War, serving as a front-line soldier and sergeant. She shares an intimate, mud-splattered account of life, survival, and camaraderie in the trenches.

Country Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago: Personal recollections and reminiscences of a sexagenarian
Canniff Haight
This memoir captures the vanishing textures of nineteenth-century Ontario, offering a vivid, unvarnished window into the daily rhythms, social customs, and rugged realities of pioneer life.

Emperor William First, the Great War and Peace Hero
A. Walter
A life defined by military duty and the unification of a fractured nation, this portrait captures the ascent of a prince who became the first German Emperor. It traces a long, disciplined journey from the Napoleonic wars to the pinnacle of European power.

Ignaz Jan Paderewski
Edward Algernon Baughan
A brilliant, tempestuous force of the concert hall, this portrait captures the man behind the myth. It explores how a singular Polish artist transformed from a struggling student into the most celebrated pianist of his generation.

Le Petit Nord
Anne Grenfell
A volunteer nurse trades the comforts of civilization for a rugged, wind-swept frontier, finding that the harsh reality of the far north holds a profound and lasting human warmth.

Lloyd George: The Man and His Story
Frank Dilnot
A whirlwind of political ambition and relentless energy, this portrait captures the ascent of a small-town boy who dared to challenge the British establishment and ultimately command the nation during its hour of greatest peril.

Memoirs of the Courts of Louis XV and XVI
Mme. Du Hausset
HOOK This intimate chronicle offers an insider’s view of the French monarchy’s final, crumbling days, as witnessed by a devoted confidante within the Queen’s private circle.

Miniature essays: Igor Stravinsky
Anonymous
This short volume offers a concentrated, contemporary assessment of a composer whose rapid evolution challenged the musical conventions of the early twentieth century. It serves as both a biographical primer and a defense of his shifting aesthetic.

My Life In The South
Jacob Stroyer
A man who spent his youth in bondage recounts the daily reality of Southern plantation life, the harrowing experience of forced labor during the Civil War, and the profound transformation of his world upon emancipation.

Old Portraits and Modern Sketches: Part 1 from Volume VI of The Works of John Greenleaf Whittier
John Greenleaf Whittier
An exploration of the lives of historical figures, this collection of biographical sketches examines the intersection of personal conscience, religious conviction, and the often-harsh political realities of their respective centuries.

Pathfinders of the Great Plains: A Chronicle of La Vérendrye and his Sons
Lawrence J. (Lawrence Johnstone) Burpee
A testament to the relentless human impulse to map the unknown, this chronicle follows a French explorer and his sons into the heart of the North American wilderness.

Quotations from Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
The private record of an ambitious seventeenth-century bureaucrat, this work offers an unparalleled window into the Restoration era, capturing the collision of high-stakes politics, the terror of plague and fire, and the small, messy details of daily life.

Robert E. Lee: A Story and a Play
Ruth Hill
A portrait of a man shaped by Virginia and the crucible of war, this account follows a legendary general from his early life to his final days as a college president.

The Greville Memoirs, Part 3 (of 3), Volume 2 (of 2): A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1852 to 1860
Charles Greville
The corridors of mid-Victorian power reveal their secrets through a keen observer’s lens. This chronicle captures the shifting tides of British politics, diplomacy, and the private anxieties of a governing class navigating a rapidly changing world.