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Biographies — page 9
2,563 public-domain biographies books, summarised. Page 9 of 54.
The Trial of Oscar Wilde, from the Shorthand Reports
Charles Grolleau
A high-stakes libel suit collapses into a devastating criminal trial, exposing the hidden subcultures and bitter enmities of Victorian London.
Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery
Filson Young
Driven by an absolute faith in land across the dark ocean, a humble mariner secures royal backing, survives perilous voyages into the unknown, and dies locked in a bitter struggle to claim his promised reward.
Six Years in the Prisons of England
Unknown
To enter the nineteenth-century British penal system was to step into a hidden, highly calculated machine designed to strip a man of his independence. This extraordinary, candid memoir reveals the inner workings of English prisons through the eyes of an educated insider who observed every detail of his six-year…
Hume: (English Men of Letters Series)
Thomas Henry Huxley
Stripping away philosophical pretension, this work grounds human knowledge, morals, and social order firmly in natural instinct, habit, and physical experience.
Life of Charles Dickens
Marzials, Frank T. (Frank Thomas), Sir
A child of the London slums and debtors' prisons rises to become the undisputed monarch of Victorian literature through boundless energy, keen observation, and an unmatched capacity for human empathy.
George Washington's Rules of Civility: Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway
George Washington
A fourteen-year-old schoolboy copies out 110 handwritten maxims on decorum, creating a foundational blueprint for self-discipline, social harmony, and American leadership.
Baden-Powell of Mafeking
J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
An energetic, adaptable officer keeps his head, his humor, and his duty intact through bush tracking, colonial expeditions, and seven months under siege.
The Works of George Berkeley. Vol. 1 of 4: Philosophical Works, 1705-21
George Berkeley
Our immediate perception reveals not an independent material world, but a constant sequence of sensations sustained directly by a divine mind.
A Mind That Found Itself: An Autobiography
Clifford Whittingham Beers
Surviving mental collapse and years of institutional abuse, one man turns his private battlefield into a public crusade for psychiatric reform.
The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay
Fanny Burney
A young woman publishes a novel in secret, steps overnight into London's most brilliant literary circles, and eventually finds herself bound to five years of exhausting service at the Georgian court.
Home Life of Great Authors
Hattie Tyng Griswold
Behind closed doors, the iconic literary figures of the nineteenth century lived lives as fraught with financial strain, domestic friction, and emotional turmoil as any of their characters.
Great leaders: Historic portraits from the great historians
Unknown
A rich gallery of historical figures comes to life through short, vivid character studies crafted by master chroniclers. These selected prose portraits illuminate the human drives, flaws, and genius behind world-shaping events.
The Life of Charlotte Brontë
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Surviving a bleak isolation on the Yorkshire moors, a clergyman's daughter transforms domestic hardship and profound personal bereavement into some of the nineteenth century’s most vital, fiery literature.
The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2
Rupert Hughes
Genius on the stage rarely guarantees wisdom in the bedroom.
The True Benjamin Franklin
Sydney George Fisher
A penniless runaway eating rolls in the street grows into a philosopher who tames lightning and negotiates the birth of a nation.
Elizabeth, Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary
Carl Küchler
An idyllic childhood in the Bavarian woods gives way to the suffocating rigidity of the Habsburg court, forging a life marked by restless wandering and profound grief.
Tolstoy
Romain Rolland
A titanic soul spends eighty years torn between the urge to depict human existence in its full sensory glory and the desperate need to discover its underlying moral purpose.
The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 1 (of 4)
William Milligan Sloane
An ambitious young provincial transforms himself into the center of European history through raw will, calculated risk, and absolute devotion to his own destiny.
The Story of Commodore John Barry
Martin I. J. (Martin Ignatius Joseph) Griffin
A stubborn Irish sea captain fights the Royal Navy across two oceans, establishing the tactical precedents and command structure of a newborn American fleet.
Andersonville diary
John L. Ransom
A Union soldier’s spare, daily account of survival transforms the unspeakable squalor of Southern prison pens into a resilient record of human endurance, comradeship, and final freedom.
Schopenhauer
Margrieta Beer
Life's deep misery dissolves when we set aside our selfish drives, surrendering the individual will to quiet contemplation, art, and universal sympathy.
Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk
Sauk chief Black Hawk
A leader stripped of his homeland looks back over a life of battle, betrayal, and quiet endurance.
Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. Volume 1
George Otto Trevelyan
Early nineteenth-century British politics and intellectual life come alive through the intimate papers, brilliant parliamentary triumphs, and private affection of a master historian framed by his devoted nephew.
The generals of the last war with Great Britain
John S. (John Stilwell) Jenkins
Courage, duty, and tactical fortitude define the leaders who forged a young nation's military identity during its second war for independence.
The True Story of My Life: A Sketch
H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen
A penniless cobbler's son sets out from a small provincial town, armed only with a puppet theater, a passion for verse, and an unshakeable belief that a benevolent providence guides his path.
Memoirs of Madame la Marquise de Montespan
Madame de Montespan
An intimate, razor-sharp view of Sun King-era Versailles through the eyes of the royal mistress who ruled its inner circle with devastating wit and ambition.
Pius IX. And His Time
Æneas MacDonell Dawson
A lifetime of upheaval, exile, and ideological warfare forms the canvas of this detailed account, which traces the pontificate of Pius IX through the stormy transformation of nineteenth-century European states, Papal territory, and Catholic dogma.
Yesterdays with Authors
James Thomas Fields
Behind the velvet curtain of nineteenth-century literature sat an American publisher who became an intimate friend to the greatest writers of his day. Through preserved letters, vivid travel memories, and quiet fireside exchanges, this remarkable volume offers an unvarnished, affectionate portrait of literary…
English and American tool builders
Joseph Wickham Roe
Before the modern engine could turn a single wheel, mechanics had to build the tools that built the engines. This history reveals the forgotten intellects who carved precision out of raw iron, laying the bedrock of modern industry.
The Journal to Stella
Jonathan Swift
A private journal sent across the Irish Sea becomes the ultimate backstage pass to Queen Anne’s court, where raw ambition, political backstabbing, and tender affection collide.
Oscar Wilde, a Critical Study
Arthur Ransome
A writer’s art cannot be cleanly separated from the theatre of his self-creation, nor can his finest achievements be understood without assessing his grandest failures.
Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
HOOK A profound voice of the nineteenth century navigates the perilous passage from bondage to freedom and, later, demands that a fractured nation secure true equality through the transformative power of the ballot.
The Life of Thomas Telford, Civil Engineer: With an Introductory History of Roads and Travelling in Great Britain
Samuel Smiles
A master builder’s rise from a humble mason to the "Colossus of Roads," this biography charts the transformation of Britain’s rugged, isolated landscape into a connected, modern nation through the power of civil engineering.
Lincoln's yarns and stories
Alexander K. (Alexander Kelly) McClure
The wisdom of a president is often measured by his words, but for this leader, it was found in the laughter he cultivated. Through droll stories and plain-spoken humor, he navigated a nation through its deepest divide.
Mark Twain: A Biography. Volume I, Part 2: 1866-1875
Albert Bigelow Paine
A restless spirit turns his sharp eye toward the world, transforming the raw material of a wandering life into the foundation of a lasting American legend.
John Stuart Mill
Unknown
This collective biography captures the intellectual evolution of a Victorian polymath, illustrating how a rigorous, sheltered upbringing produced one of the nineteenth century’s most influential architects of modern political and social reform.
A Young Girl's Diary
Cedar Paul
An intimate, unvarnished record of adolescent awakening, this journal captures the inner life of a young Viennese girl navigating the fragile, often confusing transition from childhood to maturity. It remains a classic study of the developing self, preserved precisely as it was written.
George Bernard Shaw
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
This study explores the mind of a notoriously complex public figure, dissecting his philosophy, his work as a playwright, and his unique position in the intellectual landscape of his time. It serves as an intimate, if combative, portrait of a man who thrived on provocation.
Philosophical Works, v. 1 (of 4): Including All the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Editions Published by the Author
David Hume
Through a rigorous examination of human perception, memory, and the mechanics of belief, this work challenges the foundations of certainty, transforming the reader's understanding of the mind itself.
A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln: Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History
John G. (John George) Nicolay
The arc of a singular American life is traced from the humble, ox-drawn wagons of a pioneer childhood to the heavy, historic burdens of the executive office during the nation's most profound rupture.
George Eliot
Mathilde Blind
This biography traces the evolution of a provincial girl from Warwickshire into England’s most profound novelist, mapping the intellectual currents and intimate connections that shaped a singular literary life.
Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Dorothy Wordsworth
The journals capture the quiet, rhythmic beauty of a life lived close to nature and the deep, intellectual pulse of a legendary creative partnership. These pages offer an intimate window into a world where poetry and daily survival are inextricably linked.
George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 3 (of 3)
George Eliot
This final volume charts the late maturity, profound grief, and unexpected autumn renewal of one of the Victorian era's most brilliant literary minds. It captures the quiet dignity of a life defined by relentless intellectual labor.
How I found Livingstone
Henry M. (Henry Morton) Stanley
Sent by a newspaper to find a missing explorer, a determined traveler hacks through the African wilderness to solve a mystery the world had long ago consigned to the grave.
Robert Browning
G. K. (Gilbert Keith) Chesterton
A vibrant look at a poet who was less a man of letters than a man of action, this study cuts through the fog of Victorian academicism to reveal a surprisingly human, impulsive, and energetic figure.
Victorian worthies
George Henry Blore
Great men are rarely defined by their solitude, but rather by the friction of their era and the indelible marks they leave upon the public consciousness. This collection of portraits chronicles the architects of an age.
Christopher Columbus and his monument Columbia
Unknown
This commemorative volume gathers historical accounts, tributes, and artistic reflections to honor the life of the Genoese explorer and the burgeoning national identity of the New World.
William Lilly's History of His Life and Times, from the Year 1602 to 1681
William Lilly
The life of a seventeenth-century astrologer unfolds through his own eyes, documenting a turbulent career that navigated the whims of both the stars and the warring factions of the English Civil War.