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Biographies — page 60
3,074 public-domain biographies books, summarised. Page 60 of 65.

Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope, as related by herself in conversations with her physician, vol. 3 (of 3)
Stanhope, Hester, Lady
HOOK Isolated in a crumbling Syrian mountain estate, an aristocratic exile navigates the twilight of her influence, holding court through sheer force of personality while the world she once knew fades into history.

The Life and Public Service of General Zachary Taylor: An Address
Abraham Lincoln
A statesman pauses to reflect on the nature of mortality and duty following the sudden passing of a national leader. This memorial address offers a rare window into a formative moment of mid-nineteenth-century American political life.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 17, No. 469, January 1, 1831
Various
A vibrant, eclectic mosaic of early nineteenth-century thought, this periodical captures the intellectual curiosities and cultural preoccupations of an era defining its own modernity through history, humor, and travel.

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.

My days and dreams
Edward Carpenter
The recollections of a Victorian-era social reformer and poet, this memoir tracks a lifetime spent challenging the rigid conventions of British society, religion, and industry while pursuing a life of manual labor, radical politics, and personal liberation.

The Nineteenth Century Apostle of the Little Ones
E. Uhlrich
This account chronicles the life of Giovanni Bosco, a nineteenth-century Italian priest who dedicated his existence to the reclamation and education of neglected youth, transforming a simple act of compassion into a global mission.

To Infidelity and Back
Henry F. (Henry Frey) Lutz
This spiritual autobiography recounts a decade-long journey from orthodox faith through the wilderness of rationalism and infidelity, ultimately returning to a firm belief in the divinity of Christ.

A Day with Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
George Sampson
A young, ambitious singer visits Felix Mendelssohn in 1840 Leipzig, spending an intimate day immersed in the composer's circle of friends and creative process. This narrative portrait captures the essence of a musical genius at the height of his powers.

Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
A singular window into the Restoration, this private record captures the daily pulse of a man navigating the high-stakes bureaucracy and intimate scandals of 17th-century London.

Journal of the Waterloo campaign, vol. 1 (of 2)
Cavalié Mercer
This journal offers a rare, ground-level perspective on the Napoleonic Wars, capturing the visceral reality of 1815 through the eyes of a professional soldier. It strips away the pomp of history to reveal the grit, exhaustion, and sudden, chaotic violence of a campaign that shaped the modern world.

Memoirs of Jean François Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
Jean François Paul de Gondi de Retz
This is the candid, high-stakes confession of a seventeenth-century archbishop who traded his cassock for the dangerous, intoxicating arena of political insurrection.

Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency
Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de
A chronicle of absolute power and its slow decay, this work captures the intricate, stifling, and often absurd reality of life within the gilded cage of the French monarchy.

Personal Experience of a Physician
John Ellis
A physician chronicles his professional evolution, moving from the traditional medical practices of the nineteenth century toward a holistic philosophy centered on temperance and the theological revelations of Emanuel Swedenborg.

The life of John Thompson, a fugitive slave
John Thompson
Born into the brutal reality of Maryland slavery, a young man discovers the transformative power of literacy and faith, ultimately risking everything to secure his own liberty and navigate the unpredictable currents of freedom.

Anthony Wayne, 1745-1796
Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County
Anthony Wayne’s fierce military career and controversial political life shaped the violent birth of the American republic and the bloody expansion of its frontier.

John Marshall
James Bradley Thayer
John Marshall stands as the essential architect of the American judiciary, a man whose steady hand and sharp intellect transformed the Supreme Court into a pillar of national authority.

Marse Henry: An Autobiography (Volume 2)
Henry Watterson
The twilight of a life spent in the thick of national politics and journalism finds its reflection in these pages, where public history softens into personal reminiscence. It is a portrait of a turbulent era, drawn with the steady hand of one who lived through it.

Neither Dorking nor the Abbey
J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie
A great writer escapes the confines of a funeral to ascend a hill, greeted by the immortal characters he created. His final journey is not to a grave, but toward a joyous reunion with his peers.

Recollections of the Private Life of Napoleon
Louis Constant Wairy
These memoirs offer a rare, intimate perspective on Napoleon Bonaparte, seen not through the eyes of a statesman or general, but through those of the man who dressed him, managed his private purse, and witnessed his most human moments.

Starr King in California
William Day Simonds
A preacher of rare eloquence and magnetism arrives in San Francisco just as the Civil War begins, single-handedly turning the tide of public opinion to secure California for the Union.

The History of the First United States Flag: and the Patriotism of Betsy Ross, the Immortal Heroine That Originated the First Flag of the Union
J. Franklin (John Franklin) Reigart
This account chronicles the origins of the American flag and celebrates the life of its legendary creator, Betsy Ross, framing her work as a vital contribution to the nation’s Revolutionary victory.

A Woman's Part in a Revolution
Natalie Harris Hammond
A woman navigates the harrowing uncertainty of the 1895–1896 Johannesburg political uprising, finding herself caught between the clash of empires and the personal agony of her husband’s imprisonment.

Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture: The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20
William Henry Ferris
A fiery, high-minded defense of the Black intellect, this portrait of a forgotten scholar reveals how the pursuit of pure learning becomes an act of defiance.

Colonel John Brown, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, the Brave Accuser of Benedict Arnold
Archibald Murray Howe
A resolute soldier and early champion of New England democracy faces betrayal, bureaucratic indifference, and a fatal ambush while trying to expose a famous traitor.

Galileo and His Judges
F. R. (Francis Richard) Wegg-Prosser
This volume examines the historical controversies surrounding the life and trials of Galileo, exploring the complex interplay between early astronomical discoveries, Church authority, and the theological debates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Old Love Stories Retold
Richard Le Gallienne
The brilliant, mocking poet Heinrich Heine found his truest companion not in a learned intellectual, but in Mathilde, a simple and lively woman who stood by him through years of joyous devotion and excruciating decline.

St. Patrick, the Father of a Sacred Nation
James F. Loughlin
An exploration of a nation's destiny, arguing that centuries of political oppression and mass emigration were part of a divine plan to transform a solitary island into a global engine of faith.

Was John Bunyan a Gipsy?
James Simson
Beneath the revered legacy of a famous dreamer lies a hidden lineage, obscured for centuries by the biting prejudice of caste and societal shame.

A Memoir of Transactions That Took Place in St. Domingo, in the Spring of 1799: Affording an Idea of the Present State of that Country, the Real Character of Its Black Governor, Toussaint L'ouverture, and the Safety of our West-India Islands, from Attack or Revolt
Rainsford, Marcus, active 1805
A British soldier’s journey into revolutionary Saint-Domingue reveals a disciplined Black republic and the striking magnanimity of its leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture.

Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 725, November 17, 1877
Various
Step into late-Victorian Britain through a vibrant literary periodical blending serialized drama, gritty urban trades, arctic exploration, and botanical curiosities.

Deportation, its meaning and menace: Last message to the people of America by Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Stripped of citizenship and cast out aboard the "Red Ark," two radical voices issue a searing warning against the drift of American democracy into autocratic terror.

With The Immortal Seventh Division
Edmund John Kennedy
Stepping from a quiet English vicarage into the harrowing chaos of the First Battle of Ypres, a frontline chaplain records the staggering endurance of the British soldier.

A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison
Paul Jennings
A firsthand account of life within the inner circle of the fourth American President, this memoir strips away the marble facade of history to reveal the human reality of a founding statesman.

Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
An intimate, unvarnished window into the daily life, professional anxieties, and private failings of a high-ranking seventeenth-century official living through the Restoration.

Franklin: A Sketch
John Bigelow
This concise biography traces the evolution of Benjamin Franklin from a runaway apprentice in colonial Boston to the most celebrated American statesman and natural philosopher of the eighteenth century. It offers a measured examination of a life defined by industriousness, intellectual curiosity, and an unwavering…

Life in Southern Prisons: From the Diary of Corporal Charles Smedley, of Company G, 90th Regiment Penn'a Volunteers, Commencing a Few Days Before the "Battle of the Wilderness", In Which He Was Taken Prisoner ... Also, a Short Description of the March to and Battle of Gettysburg, Together with a Biographical Sketch of the Author
Charles Smedley
A young soldier’s final months unfold in the spare, unvarnished entries of a private diary, documenting the harrowing reality of life and slow decline within Confederate prison camps.

The Americanism of Washington
Henry Van Dyke
To understand the true character of George Washington, one must look beyond the myths of perfection and the cynical claims that he was merely a lucky English gentleman. His greatness lay in a deeply moral, shared American ideal.

Widger's Quotations from the Project Gutenberg Editions of the Works of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
The essence of a transformational American life resides in these collected reflections, mapping the intellectual and moral evolution of a country through the singular, sharpening voice of its most consequential leader.

Fifteen Years with the Outcast
Fflorens Roberts
Faith and tenacity drive a woman to confront the shadows of early twentieth-century California, seeking out society’s castaways in the brutal corners of the Barbary Coast. These accounts detail the difficult, often heartbreaking work of rescue mission life.

Memoirs of Louis XIV and His Court and of the Regency
Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de
A sharp-eyed witness chronicles the golden cage of Versailles, exposing the petty rivalries, fragile hierarchies, and hidden scandals that defined a monarch’s absolute rule.

Memoirs of the Courts of Louis XV and XVI
Mme. Du Hausset
Through the intimate, watchful eyes of those closest to the throne, witness the fragile grace and mounting tragedy of a monarchy on the precipice of revolution.

Stevensoniana: Being a Reprint of Various Literary and Pictorial Miscellany Associated with Robert Louis Stevenson, the Man and His Work
Various
This collection gathers the scattered fragments of a brilliant, peripatetic life, offering a rare glimpse into the man behind the iconic prose. It stands as a portrait of a restless spirit who, despite chronic illness and constant wandering, found his true home in the distant South Seas.

The Early Life of Mark Rutherford (W. Hale White)
William Hale White
Quietly reflecting on a mid-Victorian youth, this memoir charts a journey from rigid provincial Dissent into intellectual freedom, measuring the quiet cost of independent thought.

The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences
Hosea Quinby
This firsthand account of nineteenth-century penal life offers a rare, unflinching look at the collision between reform-minded faith and the cold machinery of state-run incarceration. It remains a poignant record of a man tasked with saving souls in a place designed to break bodies.

A girl's life eighty years ago
Eliza Southgate Bowne
Young, brilliant, and fiercely curious, a nineteenth-century woman chronicles her passage through early American society, tracing the delicate line between duty and intellectual freedom before her life is cut tragically short.

Clara A. Swain, M.D
Hoskins, Robert, Mrs.
A life of quiet, medical service began in a small New York village and stretched across the world to become the foundation of women’s hospital care in India. This record traces the transformation of an ambitious, determined girl into a pioneering physician who navigated both the rigors of medical training and the…

Diary of Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
This is an intimate, unfiltered portrait of a man navigating the corridors of power and the messy, mundane details of his own household in Restoration London. It serves as both a vital historical record and a deeply human mirror.

The Girl and the Kingdom: Learning to Teach
Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
Stepping into a bustling San Francisco slum, a young pioneer establishes the Pacific Coast's first free kindergarten, transforming chaotic lives through love, patience, and Froebelian education.