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Biographies — page 16
2,679 public-domain biographies books, summarised. Page 16 of 56.
My Schools and Schoolmasters
Hugh Miller
A working-class stonemason explores the cliffs, quarries, and coastal wilderness of nineteenth-century Scotland, discovering that the true teachers of a human life extend far beyond the walls of any traditional classroom.
Noah Webster: American Men of Letters
Horace Elisha Scudder
Driven by a fierce, stubborn desire to free the new American republic from European intellectual control, a self-made patriot spends decades constructing the linguistic bedrock of a rising nation.
Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Her Life and Letters (1689-1762)
Lewis Melville
An extraordinary eighteenth-century aristocrat defies the rigid social limits of her age, trading London gossip and political maneuvering for daring foreign travel, intellectual freedom, and a lasting place in literary history.
T. De Witt Talmage as I Knew Him
T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt) Talmage
Through fire, fame, and endless travel, a nineteenth-century preacher reflects on a life spent in pursuit of the pulpit’s reach and the world’s edge.
Eminent literary and scientific men of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. Vol. 1 (of 3)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Shelley traces the fiery trajectories of Italy’s foundational minds through exile, political ruin, and relentless artistic devotion. It is a luminous collective biography that treats genius not as a passive gift, but as an arduous, bloody struggle against a chaotic world.
The Diary of Dr. John William Polidori, 1816, Relating to Byron, Shelley, etc
John William Polidori
An ambitious young doctor sets out across Europe in the shadow of giants, mapping the landscape, the scandals, and the brilliant minds that define Romanticism.
Letters of a Woman Homesteader
Elinore Pruitt Stewart
Life on a Wyoming claim requires grit, but here it yields a sparkling, bone-deep joy in every meal caught, cabin built, and neighbor welcomed.
The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Volume 1 (of 3): To Headwaters of the Mississippi River Through Louisiana Territory, and in New Spain, During the Years 1805-6-7
Zebulon Montgomery Pike
A single officer leading twenty men into frozen wilderness must rely on discipline, diplomacy, and absolute resolve to keep his company alive.
Henry Martyn, Saint and Scholar: First Modern Missionary to the Mohammedans, 1781-1812
George Smith
Driven by an intense inner devotion and an unrelenting scholarly focus, a brilliant young Cambridge mathematician surrenders his academic prospects and personal happiness to bring Christian texts to the 19th-century Islamic world.
Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals: In Two Volumes, Volume II
Samuel Finley Breese Morse
A quiet genius conceives a revolutionary network on an ocean voyage, only to spend decades defending his right to be remembered as its true creator.
Famous composers and their works, Vol. 2
Unknown
Artistic creation requires a delicate, perilous balance between untamed genius and the unyielding demands of patron, theater, and public taste.
Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains
Charles A. Eastman
A rare, insider portrayal of North American Indian leaders, where personal honor meets the tragic force of a changing continent.
London to Ladysmith via Pretoria
Winston Churchill
A young war correspondent travels to South Africa, falls into enemy hands, escapes on foot through hostile territory, and returns to the front line to witness the costly, agonizing relief of a besieged British garrison.
Thomas Henry Huxley
Mitchell, P. Chalmers (Peter Chalmers), Sir
From a cramped surgeon’s berth aboard HMS Rattlesnake to the fierce intellectual battlegrounds of Victorian London, a self-taught naturalist transforms how humanity understands the living world, the origin of species, and the limits of human knowledge.
My Autobiography: A Fragment
F. Max (Friedrich Max) Müller
Formed in grief, tempered by raucous student days, and refined in European libraries, a brilliant philologist constructs an unvarnished account of his journey toward unlocking ancient Eastern texts.
Reminiscences of Scottish Life & Character: And a Memoir of Dean Ramsay by Cosmo Innes
Edward Bannerman Ramsay
A warm, vivid celebration of a vanishing world, capturing the unyielding wit, eccentric piety, and sharp phrasing of old Scottish life.
Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 3: With His Letters and Journals
Thomas Moore
A fiery celebrity, a whirlwind courtship, and an exile spent wandering Alpine lakes and Italian ruins shape this intimate record of romantic triumph and personal disaster. Drawn directly from private letters, detailed journals, and candid editorial notes, it catches a master poet at the height of his fame and the…
The Life of a Conspirator: Being a Biography of Sir Everard Digby by One of His Descendants
Thomas Longueville
A young, wealthy knight falls under the spell of a charismatic fanatic, risking his fortune, his family, and his head for a doomed gunpowder conspiracy against the English crown.
Life of Heber C. Kimball, an apostle
Orson F. (Orson Ferguson) Whitney
Driven by deep religious conviction and a rugged, intuitive nature, a blacksmith-turned-apostle braves violent mobs, foreign mission fields, and the treacherous Western frontier to help build a new religious society.
The Life of John Marshall, Volume 1: Frontiersman, soldier, lawmaker, 1755-1788
Albert J. (Albert Jeremiah) Beveridge
A rugged frontiersman and soldier rises to prominence, shaping the fragile foundations of a new nation through the crucible of revolutionary war and the intense political battles of the early American Republic.
Twenty Years a Detective in the Wickedest City in the World
Clifton R. (Clifton Rodman) Wooldridge
A career lawman chronicles two decades of relentless combat against the grifters, swindlers, and criminal syndicates that once turned Chicago into a sprawling marketplace for human deception.
Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy
George Biddell Airy
The disciplined life of a nineteenth-century scientific polymath is captured here, tracing the transition from brilliant student to the formidable figure who anchored British astronomy for nearly half a century.
Life, letters, and Epicurean philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, the celebrated beauty of the seventeenth century
Ninon de Lenclos
This collection offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a legendary seventeenth-century wit, whose salon became the epicenter of intellectual and romantic discourse in a rigid, tradition-bound France. It serves as a candid manual for the art of living with elegance, skepticism, and psychological acuity.
Makers of Electricity
James J. (James Joseph) Walsh
These biographical sketches explore the lives of early electrical pioneers, arguing that their profound scientific achievements were inseparable from their deep-seated religious faith and commitment to moral duty.
Sixty Years of California Song
Margaret Blake Alverson
Man must reap and sow and sing; love and forgive and sing; rear the young with tenderness and sing. Then, silently, step forth to meet whatever is—and sing.
Balzac
Frederick Lawton
The portrait of a colossal literary ambition, this account traces the feverish life of a man who attempted to map the entirety of human existence through the sheer force of his imagination.
A voyage to the South Sea : Undertaken by command of His Majesty for the purpose of conveying the bread-fruit tree to the West Indies in His Majesty's ship the Bounty commanded by Lieutenant William Bligh
William Bligh
A commander chronicles the ambitious mission to transport breadfruit across the world, only to face a harrowing survival story after his crew turns against him.
"Co. Aytch," Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment
Samuel R. (Samuel Rush) Watkins
This is the unvarnished account of an ordinary infantryman’s journey through the Civil War, capturing the gritty, often absurd, and haunting reality of life in the ranks of the Confederate Army of Tennessee.
Letters of Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy from Italy and Switzerland
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy
A profound musical talent traverses the sun-drenched landscapes of Italy and the formidable peaks of Switzerland, documenting a transformation that bridges the intimacy of home and the vastness of the world.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
John Addington Symonds
The life of a brilliant, erratic, and misunderstood poet unfolds here as a tragic collision between a radical, visionary spirit and the unyielding machinery of 19th-century social and legal convention.
George Washington: Farmer: Being an Account of His Home Life and Agricultural Activities
Paul Leland Haworth
George Washington’s public leadership often eclipses his lifelong devotion to the land, yet his private records reveal a pioneer who managed Mount Vernon with the same meticulous rigor he brought to the battlefield.
History of Friedrich II of Prussia
Thomas Carlyle
The life of a king is rarely a single, steady march; it is a collision of temperaments, a molding of raw human will against the unforgiving anvil of statecraft.
Mary and I: Forty Years with the Sioux
Stephen Return Riggs
HOOK This memoir chronicles the decades-long endeavor of a missionary couple to bring the Christian Gospel and education to the Dakota people of the American frontier.
A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career: Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum
Joel Benton
This biography chronicles the life of the nineteenth-century American showman P. T. Barnum, tracing his ascent from a struggling rural merchant to a global architect of public spectacle and political influence.
Augustus: The Life and Times of the Founder of the Roman Empire
Evelyn S. (Evelyn Shirley) Shuckburgh
The architect of the Roman Empire remains a study in calculated restraint and quiet authority. This detailed biography explores how a young man navigated the wreckage of a republic to forge a lasting imperial peace.
Jeanne d'Arc, Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France: Being the Story of Her Life, Her Achievements, and Her Death, as Attested on Oath and Set Forth in the Original Documents
Unknown
A girl from a remote village leads armies, defies powerful churchmen, and meets a harrowing end, all captured in the stark, unadorned language of the original court records that condemned her.
Autobiography: Truth and Fiction Relating to My Life
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
This memoir captures the formative evolution of a literary giant, blending the clarity of retrospection with the raw, impressionable intensity of a young mind navigating the cultural currents of eighteenth-century Europe.
The Surrender of Napoleon: Being the narrative of the surrender of Buonaparte, and of his residence on board H.M.S. Bellerophon, with a detail of the principal events that occurred in that ship between the 24th of May and the 8th of August 1815
Maitland, Frederick Lewis, Sir
A commanding officer faces an impossible dilemma when the world’s most famous fugitive surrenders to his ship, marking the final, quiet curtain call of a fallen emperor.
Memoirs of General Lafayette: With an Account of His Visit to America and His Reception By the People of the United States
Samuel L. (Samuel Lorenzo) Knapp
The aging hero returns to the nation he helped forge, met by a people eager to crown his twilight years with the gratitude of a grateful republic.
The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Volume 1: With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes
John Dryden
A towering architect of English verse, this collection chronicles the rise, influence, and ultimate displacement of a poet who defined the sound of the seventeenth century. It reveals a master of satire, translation, and political allegory whose work remains a touchstone for rhetorical power and intellectual…
Theodore Roosevelt and His Times: A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement
Harold Howland
The life of Theodore Roosevelt serves as an enduring epitaph for a man who met every challenge with a fight. This chronicle charts the rise of the Progressive movement through the lens of its most magnetic, combative figure.
Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, Vol. 1 of 2: Life, Letters to 1535
Roger Bigelow Merriman
A master of administrative detail and ruthless political strategy, this statesman navigated the treacherous waters of the Henrician court to reshape the English state. His life reveals the calculated machinery behind a monumental era.
The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
These documents trace the emergence of a crisis in American governance, revealing the steady, deliberate evolution of a leader facing an unprecedented national dissolution. Through private letters, official proclamations, and public addresses, the internal and external pressures of a fracturing Union come into…
Theodore Roosevelt
Edmund Lester Pearson
A vibrant portrait of a leader who lived by the doctrine of the "strenuous life," constantly testing his mettle through public service, exploration, and an unyielding commitment to his country.
Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy
Charles W. (Charles Wendell) David
The ill-fated life of a Norman duke unfolds through his failed crusades, lost inheritance, and eventual descent into decades of lonely imprisonment.
Caesar: A Sketch
James Anthony Froude
This historical study re-examines the life and legacy of a defining Roman figure, stripping away centuries of moralizing to reveal a pragmatic reformer navigating a collapsing republic. It is a portrait of power and its inevitable, violent costs.
The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales
Jean-Pierre Camus
True sanctity is not found in grand gestures, but in the quiet, persistent practice of gentleness, humility, and the disinterested love of God.
General Scott
Marcus J. (Marcus Joseph) Wright
This military biography chronicles the long, distinguished career of Winfield Scott, tracing his rise from a youthful officer in the War of 1812 to his status as the venerable commander of the Union armies.