Who are the best biography authors?

The best-known biography authors here, ranked by how widely they are read and written about, are Charles Darwin, Victor Hugo, Abraham Lincoln, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.

What are the best biography series?

Voices of Utopia by Svetlana Alexievich, The Outline of History by H. G. Wells and The Black Flame Trilogy by W. E. B. Du Bois — each listed in reading order.

Can I read biography books for free?

Yes. 3,082 biography books by these authors are in the public domain in the US and free to read here.

Biography authors and series

The best-known biography authors are Charles Darwin, Victor Hugo and Abraham Lincoln. Below are all 918 biography writers in the directory, their series in reading order, and 3,082 of their books free to read.

Authors: 918
Series: 3
Free to read: 3,082

Best-known biography authors

Biography series in reading order

All series

Voices of Utopia
Svetlana Alexievich · 5 books
The Outline of History
H. G. Wells · 13 books
The Black Flame Trilogy
W. E. B. Du Bois · 3 books

Free biography classics

All free classics

Life and Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1
Charles Darwin
More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1
Charles Darwin
Notre-Dame de Paris
Victor Hugo
Les Misérables
Victor Hugo
The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete
Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Abraham Lincoln
Beyond Good and Evil
Friedrich Nietzsche
Thus Spake Zarathustra
Friedrich Nietzsche
The Interpretation of Dreams
Sigmund Freud
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete
Leonardo da Vinci
A Treatise on Painting
Leonardo da Vinci
The River War
Winston Churchill
The Story of the Malakand Field Force
Winston Churchill

Classic biography authors

All biography authors

Charles Darwin 29 books
Victor Hugo 38 books
Abraham Lincoln 17 books
Friedrich Nietzsche 26 books
Sigmund Freud 60 books
Leonardo da Vinci 0 books
Winston Churchill 25 books
Anton Chekhov 37 books
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 25 books
George Washington 7 books
Martin Luther 29 books
Charlie Chaplin 7 books
Augustine of Hippo 12 books
Napoleon 0 books
Benjamin Franklin 13 books
Lord Byron 29 books
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 0 books
Ludwig van Beethoven 0 books
H. G. Wells 118 books
Thomas Jefferson 10 books
Marcus Aurelius 1 books
Richard Wagner 20 books
Cicero 14 books
Vincent van Gogh 0 books
Theodore Roosevelt 34 books
Marie Curie 0 books
Christopher Columbus 0 books
Maxim Gorky 64 books
Henry Ford 4 books
Augustus 0 books
Helen Keller 15 books
Søren Kierkegaard 19 books
John Stuart Mill 19 books
Mary Shelley 13 books
Sarah Bernhardt 6 books
David Hume 18 books
Murasaki Shikibu 2 books
Walt Whitman 13 books
George Eliot 19 books
Nikola Tesla 0 books
John Adams 7 books
Ulysses S. Grant 2 books
Charles Baudelaire 6 books
Kamala Harris 4 books
John Keats 4 books
Pearl S. Buck 72 books
Samuel Johnson 20 books
Tacitus 5 books
Rainer Maria Rilke 24 books
William James 26 books
Li Bai 0 books
André Gide 31 books
Alexander von Humboldt 17 books
Romain Rolland 28 books
John Quincy Adams 14 books
Xenophon 10 books
Harriet Beecher Stowe 38 books
James Cook 0 books
George H. W. Bush 4 books
Emma Goldman 14 books
Stefan Zweig 43 books
Albrecht Dürer 0 books
John Dewey 55 books
Queen Victoria 0 books
Malala Yousafzai 5 books
Thomas Carlyle 36 books
Washington Irving 28 books
Peter Kropotkin 19 books
Plutarch 7 books
Edward Gibbon 5 books
Albert Schweitzer 25 books
Freddie Mercury 2 books
Michelle Obama 5 books
Hector Berlioz 14 books
Frederick Douglass 16 books
Giacomo Casanova 3 books
P. T. Barnum 8 books
Thomas Henry Huxley 34 books
Ivan Bunin 14 books
Franz Liszt 5 books
Alexis de Tocqueville 4 books
Andrew Carnegie 14 books
Calvin Coolidge 0 books
Maulana Jalal al-Din Rumi 0 books
Grover Cleveland 14 books
Napoleon III 3 books
Boris Johnson 8 books
George Berkeley 10 books
Teresa of Ávila 3 books
Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell 18 books
Elizabeth Taylor 3 books
Charles Babbage 8 books
W. E. B. Du Bois 38 books
Jane Addams 9 books
Robert Burns 5 books
German Emperor William II 9 books
Annie Besant 56 books
Svetlana Alexievich 7 books
William McKinley 0 books
Robert Graves 66 books
Plotinus 1 books
Benjamin Harrison 6 books
Warren G. Harding 0 books
Horace Walpole 11 books
Felix Mendelssohn 1 books
Peter Abelard 4 books
David Livingstone 5 books
William Godwin 18 books
Frédéric Mistral 3 books
Booker T. Washington 20 books
Thomas Babington Macaulay 21 books
Amelia Earhart 6 books
Giuseppe Garibaldi 5 books
Carrie Fisher 7 books
Drew Barrymore 6 books
Thérèse of Lisieux 7 books
Joseph Priestley 45 books
John Wesley 33 books
Annie Ernaux 21 books
Giorgio Vasari 1 books
John James Audubon 6 books
George Harrison 3 books
Bertha von Suttner 6 books
Max Müller 47 books
William Ewart Gladstone 12 books
Ernest Renan 13 books
Elizabeth Cady Stanton 8 books
Emmeline Pankhurst 2 books
Anthony Bourdain 14 books
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf 2 books
Alex Ferguson 2 books
Brigitte Bardot 0 books
Thomas De Quincey 26 books
Henri Barbusse 4 books
Samuel Pepys 1 books
Babur 1 books
Germaine de Staël 8 books
Patrick Modiano 32 books
Henry Morton Stanley 8 books
Thomas Moore 16 books
Joseph Smith 0 books
Alexander Herzen 2 books
Henry Adams 20 books
Nellie Bly 4 books
Bartolomé de las Casas 3 books
Amerigo Vespucci 1 books
Samuel Smiles 23 books
Suetonius 0 books
Isadora Duncan 3 books
Kirk Douglas 11 books
Rebecca West 23 books
Lauren Bacall 3 books
Karl May 19 books
Rigoberta Menchú 4 books
Olaudah Equiano 1 books
Ignatius of Loyola 0 books
Chuck Norris 5 books
Charles I of England 0 books
John D. Rockefeller 0 books
Josephus 0 books
Shirley MacLaine 13 books
Johan Huizinga 7 books
Anna Politkovskaya 6 books
James Boswell 6 books
Frances Burney 8 books
Elbert Hubbard 20 books
Harry Houdini 0 books
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson 0 books
Sidney Poitier 4 books
Harriet Jacobs 1 books
Margaret Sanger 7 books
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington 0 books
Evelyn Waugh 40 books
Bing Crosby 1 books
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis 6 books
Julian 0 books
Samuel Morse 10 books
Jean-Henri Fabre 14 books
Steve Biko 3 books
Joan Rivers 12 books
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 11 books
Paramahansa Yogananda 0 books
Mother Jones 1 books
Mary Baker Eddy 16 books
Laurence Olivier 5 books
William Tecumseh Sherman 3 books
Alfred Thayer Mahan 17 books
Pío Baroja 8 books
Margaret Fuller 7 books
Marjane Satrapi 3 books
Josephine Baker 3 books
Buster Keaton 2 books
Elizabeth Blackwell 13 books
Alexander Berkman 6 books
Abigail Adams 1 books
Emilio Aguinaldo 2 books
Keith Richards 3 books
Bernard of Clairvaux 1 books
David Brewster 6 books
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun 1 books
Lytton Strachey 17 books
François Arago 9 books
A. E. Waite 34 books
Gloria Steinem 10 books
Betty White 6 books
Priscilla Presley 5 books
Charles Lindbergh 5 books
François Guizot 8 books
Georg Brandes 11 books
Louis Agassiz 10 books
Tiger Woods 2 books
Sabine Baring-Gould 56 books
Jacob Riis 12 books
Robert G. Ingersoll 7 books
Alex Haley 17 books
Henry Fonda 2 books
Asa Gray 17 books
Puyi 3 books
George Moore 51 books
Jahangir 0 books
Carl Van Vechten 15 books
Benvenuto Cellini 1 books
A. S. Neill 17 books
Ronald Knox 73 books
Walter Isaacson 15 books
Friedrich Fröbel 7 books
Donald Rumsfeld 3 books
Ayaan Hirsi Ali 6 books
Trevor Noah 3 books
Amy Poehler 2 books
Lady Gregory 16 books
Lydia Maria Child 25 books
Mary Somerville 5 books
Thomas Gray 3 books
John Marshall 7 books
Errol Flynn 3 books
Ida Tarbell 10 books
Ernest Shackleton 0 books
Evelyn Underhill 38 books
Oliver Lodge 32 books
Marie Stopes 7 books
ʻAbdu'l-Bahá 10 books
Mungo Park 8 books
Mick Jagger 1 books
Simon Newcomb 13 books
Sojourner Truth 0 books
Tony Curtis 3 books
Edward Everett Hale 49 books
Geronimo 0 books
Camille Saint-Saëns 0 books
Clara Barton 7 books
Emilio Segrè 5 books
William Wilberforce 6 books
Jill Biden 4 books
Samuel de Champlain 0 books
Alec Baldwin 2 books
Charles Godfrey Leland 26 books
Aaron Burr 0 books
Ginger Rogers 1 books
Zitkala-Ša 2 books
Margaret Oliphant 34 books
Frank McCourt 8 books
Waris Dirie 4 books
Axel Munthe 3 books
Eugene V. Debs 5 books
Daniel Webster 3 books
James Anthony Froude 23 books
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 5 books
John Knox 3 books
Władysław Szpilman 1 books
Richard Henry Dana Jr. 5 books
Henry Cabot Lodge 13 books
Marquis de Lafayette 0 books
Andrew Dickson White 21 books
Jon Krakauer 9 books
Frank Harris 15 books
John Evelyn 5 books
John Addington Symonds 24 books
Jane Ellen Harrison 16 books
Margaret of Valois 0 books
Barbara Walters 3 books
Peter Bogdanovich 12 books
James Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce 15 books
Buffalo Bill 13 books
Rose Wilder Lane 15 books
David Niven 2 books
Joshua Slocum 5 books
George Fox 4 books
Natalie Clifford Barney 2 books
Allan Pinkerton 18 books
James Randi 12 books
Edmund Gosse 37 books
Billie Jean King 4 books
Kevin Hart 2 books
John Muir 0 books
Klaus Kinski 2 books
Natan Sharansky 3 books
Kate Millett 11 books
Ray Kroc 1 books
Burt Reynolds 3 books
Alfred Dreyfus 0 books
Henri-Frédéric Amiel 3 books
Arthur Waley 19 books
Leslie Stephen 19 books
Philip Sheridan 3 books
Mary Seacole 1 books
Hedda Hopper 1 books
Giovanni Papini 7 books
Amy Carmichael 26 books
Randy Pausch 1 books
John Toland 9 books
David Strauss 8 books
Einhard 1 books
Robert Chambers 18 books
Edward Augustus Freeman 21 books
Omar Sharif 2 books
Henry Steel Olcott 7 books
Henri Charrière 2 books
Julia Ward Howe 9 books
Rosalynn Carter 4 books
William H. Seward 32 books
Madame de Pompadour 0 books
Sophia Tolstaya 2 books
Arthur Symons 32 books
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simon 1 books
Gilbert Gottfried 1 books
John Newton 6 books
Edward Thomas 22 books
Charles Eastman 10 books
Amos Bronson Alcott 7 books
James Herriot 35 books
Ben Carson 7 books
John Dee 0 books
Arthur Ashe 5 books
Alan Alda 4 books
Stephen E. Ambrose 29 books
Fran Drescher 4 books
Henry Schoolcraft 16 books
Sidney Lee 10 books
Henri Troyat 21 books
John Philip Sousa 5 books
Liv Ullmann 2 books
Sergey Aksakov 3 books
John Morley 16 books
Mary Augusta Ward 13 books
Manfred von Richthofen 0 books
Davy Crockett 1 books
Lisa Marie Presley 4 books
Clements Markham 12 books
Silvio Pellico 8 books
Louise Brooks 2 books
Evelyn Beatrice Hall 4 books
Chaim Herzog 5 books
Varlam Shalamov 3 books
Coretta Scott King 3 books
John Clare 5 books
Samantha Power 2 books
Richard Pryor 1 books
Bartolomé Mitre 2 books
George Grote 13 books
Jung Chang 6 books
Carmen Sylva 0 books
Shelley Winters 2 books
Lena Dunham 2 books
Billy Crystal 4 books
Colley Cibber 18 books
David Ogilvy 5 books
John Leguizamo 7 books
Studs Terkel 21 books
Russell Brand 6 books
Simone Signoret 2 books
W. H. Davies 13 books
Carl Bernstein 7 books
Charles Barkley 3 books
Fanny Kemble 7 books
Henry Fuseli 7 books
Archibald Gracie IV 2 books
Anna Leonowens 5 books
William T. Kane 5 books
John Waters 16 books
George Burns 8 books
Natascha Kampusch 1 books
Pete Townshend 6 books
Yeonmi Park 2 books
Meriwether Lewis 0 books
John Hay 15 books
Ninon de l'Enclos 0 books
Steve Irwin 0 books
Samuel Goldwyn 1 books
William Howard Russell 4 books
Cheryl Strayed 7 books
Arthur Young 10 books
Marie Bashkirtseff 1 books
Assata Shakur 3 books
Iris Chang 8 books
Alois Senefelder 2 books
Gerda Lerner 12 books
Samuel Baker 9 books
George B. McClellan 13 books
Frances Power Cobbe 6 books
William Lyon Mackenzie King 11 books
Johann Ludwig Burckhardt 4 books
Alberto Santos-Dumont 0 books
Philip Jaisohn 1 books
Millicent Fawcett 8 books
Kenneth Anger 4 books
Jack Welch 5 books
Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck 1 books
Viktor Tsoi 0 books
Viktor Suvorov 10 books
Rockwell Kent 7 books
Richard Lydekker 26 books
Voltairine de Cleyre 1 books
Yayoi Kusama 3 books
Jesse Ventura 10 books
Bret Hart 5 books
Sterling Hayden 2 books
Sol Plaatje 3 books
Augustine Birrell 13 books
Emmanuel Carrère 18 books
Geri Halliwell 6 books
Katharine Graham 3 books
Cheryl 3 books
Maria Mitchell 1 books
Paul Robeson 2 books
Azar Nafisi 5 books
Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor 0 books
Carl von Ossietzky 1 books
Harpo Marx 1 books
Jim Corbett 6 books
George Mallory 0 books
George Biddell Airy 0 books
Frederic W. H. Myers 11 books
Tyler Perry 2 books
Agnes Mary Clerke 5 books
Edward FitzGerald 21 books
Lenny Bruce 3 books
Susanna Kaysen 5 books
Ishmael Beah 4 books
Gitta Sereny 8 books
James Beattie 9 books
Marie of Romania 0 books
Larry Hagman 1 books
Howard Jacobson 19 books
Felix Adler 7 books
Erik Larson 8 books
Miep Gies 3 books
Dave Pelzer 13 books
William Clark 0 books
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery 3 books
John E. Douglas 16 books
Queen Noor of Jordan 2 books
Roger Vadim 3 books
Adlai Stevenson I 0 books
Alan Bullock 13 books
Lowell Thomas 6 books
Amy Schumer 3 books
Gavin McInnes 4 books
Kartini 0 books
Samuel Rawson Gardiner 22 books
Anderson Cooper 4 books
Carlo Gozzi 3 books
Ida Laura Pfeiffer 8 books
Van Wyck Brooks 30 books
Craig Ferguson 3 books
Mick Foley 10 books
Robert Caro 4 books
David Grann 6 books
Roy Jenkins 11 books
Maureen O'Hara 1 books
Princess Alice of the United Kingdom 0 books
Anthony the Great 0 books
Frances Willard 4 books
Roger Corman 1 books
George Romanes 15 books
David Lagercrantz 6 books
Elena Poniatowska 9 books
John Snow 0 books
Nestor Makhno 3 books
Kelsey Grammer 1 books
George Holyoake 32 books
James Nasmyth 4 books
Betty Mahmoody 3 books
Nadezhda Mandelstam 3 books
Gordon Parks 5 books
Josephine Butler 0 books
Wil Wheaton 5 books
Felicia Day 5 books
Kim Philby 1 books
Ron Chernow 9 books
Geraldine Farrar 4 books
George Bancroft 8 books
M. Gessen 11 books
Alexander Goldenweiser 4 books
Lori Gottlieb 5 books
Rodney Dangerfield 3 books
Arthur Ponsonby, 1st Baron Ponsonby of Shulbrede 14 books
Charlotte-Elisabeth, duchesse d' Orléans 0 books
Alma Mahler 3 books
Octavia Hill 5 books
William Michael Rossetti 10 books
Emil Ludwig 21 books
Artie Lange 3 books
Joachim Fest 6 books
Susan Brownmiller 6 books
Izaak Walton 1 books
John Aubrey 0 books
Larry Flynt 5 books
Solomon Northup 0 books
Bud Spencer 1 books
Howard Schultz 2 books
Melina Mercouri 1 books
Philip Doddridge 8 books
Quentin Crisp 9 books
Chelsea Handler 6 books
Amanda Palmer 3 books
Beryl Markham 3 books
Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme 0 books
Mumia Abu-Jamal 8 books
RZA 2 books
Ellen Terry 2 books
Christina Lamb 9 books
Mihajlo Pupin 0 books
Nellie McClung 12 books
Madame de Montespan 0 books
Amy Chua 6 books
Moses Montefiore 1 books
Caitlin Moran 4 books
Anne Catherine Emmerich 1 books
François-Joseph Fétis 2 books
Dorothy Wordsworth 1 books
Alice B. Toklas 6 books
Marcellin Marbot 2 books
Jean François Paul de Gondi de Retz 1 books
John Sherman 24 books
Mary Antin 3 books
William Bligh 0 books
Jewel 5 books
Joachim Heinrich Campe 6 books
Betty MacDonald 11 books
Elizabeth Butler 3 books
Maria von Trapp 8 books
Marie Thérèse Louise of Savoy, Princesse de Lamballe 0 books
Sandro Pertini 0 books
Ernest Dowson 11 books
Louis Spohr 0 books
Matthew Henson 2 books
Jean-Dominique Bauby 1 books
Jean Fritz 41 books
Charles Bradlaugh 0 books
Ethan Allen 5 books
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. 5 books
James Longstreet 0 books
Huda Sha'arawi 1 books
Julia Margaret Cameron 2 books
Brian Mulroney 1 books
Gabriel Byrne 1 books
Maurice Chevalier 5 books
Alexander Mackenzie 0 books
François d'Orléans, Prince of Joinville 3 books
Etty Hillesum 2 books
Roy Medvedev 14 books
Joanna Lumley 9 books
Judith Gautier 6 books
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt 23 books
Yevgenia Ginzburg 2 books
Claude Lanzmann 2 books
Anna Howard Shaw 7 books
John Ross 0 books
Aurora Mardiganian 3 books
Henry Bordeaux 8 books
Nasreddine Dinet 1 books
Henry Morgenthau Sr. 0 books
Frederick Cook 0 books
Mathilde Blind 11 books
Timothy Dexter 0 books
Suniti Devi 3 books
Rebecca Skloot 1 books
George S. Boutwell 17 books
Hussain Zaidi 14 books
J. B. Bury 0 books
Jacob Abbott 0 books
Thomas Hart Benton 9 books
Alexander Shulgin 5 books
Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin 0 books
Ralph Leighton 5 books
Johann Nikolaus Forkel 2 books
Piers Morgan 8 books
Paul Gerhardt 2 books
Mary Rowlandson 0 books
Ray Harryhausen 3 books
Robert Lansing 0 books
Mosab Hassan Yousef 3 books
Hildegard Knef 2 books
Symon Petliura 0 books
John Lothrop Motley 0 books
Lynne Cheney 7 books
Henriette Campan 0 books
Karel van Mander 1 books
Neal Cassady 2 books
Åsne Seierstad 5 books
Ezra Meeker 0 books
Terence Stamp 7 books
Notker the Stammerer 0 books
Peter Martyr d'Anghiera 1 books
John W. Foster 11 books
Charles Oman 0 books
Juliette Adam 4 books
Carrie Brownstein 1 books
Zebulon Pike 0 books
Jeanne Guyon 0 books
John Wooden 6 books
Malalai Joya 1 books
Russell Freedman 35 books
Simon Callow 11 books
Nina Berberova 6 books
May Sinclair 0 books
Julia Butterfly Hill 2 books
Tim Wapshott 2 books
Frederick Roberts, 1st Earl Roberts 0 books
Françoise Hardy 0 books
John Edwards 2 books
Derek Jarman 5 books
Ruth First 9 books
Mary Prince 0 books
Izumi Shikibu 0 books
Heinrich Graetz 0 books
Samuel J. Tilden 0 books
John Stevens Cabot Abbott 0 books
Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne 0 books
Isaac Rosenberg 3 books
Rowland Hill 0 books
Laurent Fignon 1 books
Ray Romano 3 books
Lee Ranaldo 2 books
A. Mary F. Robinson 0 books
Anna Brownell Jameson 0 books
Ferdinand Gregorovius 10 books
Pavel Sudoplatov 1 books
Robbie Ross 3 books
Emily Carr 5 books
Glenn Curtiss 0 books
Carrie Nation 0 books
George Müller 0 books
Otto Jahn 0 books
Hudson Taylor 0 books
Thomas Bewick 0 books
Lilli Palmer 2 books
Feodor Chaliapin 3 books
Nicolas Notovitch 2 books
Jozef Israëls 3 books
Black Hawk 0 books
Silvanus P. Thompson 0 books
Florian Cajori 0 books
Ernst Udet 2 books
Fred Allen 2 books
Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald 0 books
Ian Hamilton 0 books
Paul Sabatier 0 books
Wilford Woodruff 0 books
Elizabeth Montagu 1 books
Jane Frances de Chantal 0 books
Orison Swett Marden 0 books
Dorothée, duchesse de Dino 0 books
André Theuriet 8 books
Scholastique Mukasonga 3 books
Woodes Rogers 0 books
13th Dalai Lama 0 books
Claude Lelouch 1 books
Fred Zinnemann 1 books
Herman Cain 4 books
Mike Gravel 5 books
Daniel Halévy 6 books
Gilbert Murray 0 books
Walter Sickert 0 books
Robert Stawell Ball 0 books
Marie Dressler 0 books
Salomon Maimon 0 books
Alfred von Reumont 0 books
Tab Hunter 1 books
Guibert of Nogent 0 books
Lord Charles Beresford 0 books
James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin 0 books
Stanley Kunitz 11 books
Ottokar Czernin 0 books
Francis Maitland Balfour 0 books
Chris Elliott 3 books
William Wells Brown 0 books
Susanna Moodie 0 books
Udo Jürgens 0 books
Christy Mathewson 0 books
Joseph McCabe 0 books
Thomas Wentworth Higginson 0 books
Princess Louise of Belgium 0 books
Elizabeth F. Ellet 0 books
John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher 0 books
Wilma Mankiller 1 books
Erwin Piscator 1 books
Pandita Ramabai 1 books
Dieter Bohlen 0 books
Henry Stephens Salt 0 books
Mel Tormé 3 books
Charles W. Chesnutt 0 books
Leonora Christina Ulfeldt 1 books
John Gould Fletcher 0 books
John Galt 0 books
Gisèle Halimi 2 books
Sandra Bernhard 3 books
George Arliss 3 books
Graham Hill 2 books
Hester Lynch Piozzi 0 books
John A. Logan 0 books
Frank Wild 0 books
Adrienne Clarkson 4 books
Joseph Grimaldi 0 books
Bertram Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale 0 books
Cosima Wagner 1 books
Ernest Mason Satow 0 books
Amelia Opie 0 books
David George Hogarth 0 books
Christiaan de Wet 0 books
Elizabeth Bisland 0 books
Edward S. Holden 0 books
Linda Arvidson 0 books
Tatian 0 books
Sessue Hayakawa 1 books
John Butler Yeats 0 books
Hannah Szenes 2 books
Geraldine Ferraro 3 books
John Kasich 6 books
Wright brothers 0 books
Johann Schiltberger 0 books
William Powell Frith 0 books
Ida Husted Harper 0 books
Thomas Heath 0 books
Walter Bonatti 3 books
Michael Foot 13 books
Aurelius Victor 0 books
Maud Gonne 4 books
Margaret Lindsay Huggins 0 books
John Malcolm 0 books
Abner Doubleday 0 books
Marek Edelman 1 books
Eddie Cantor 6 books
Agnes Strickland 0 books
Catherine Radziwill 0 books
Mary Robinson 13 books
René Doumic 0 books
Josephine Diebitsch Peary 0 books
Asia Argento 0 books
Arthur Hugh Clough 0 books
Antoine Hamilton 0 books
Valérie Trierweiler 2 books
Harry Vardon 0 books
Dionysius Lardner 0 books
Isaac Brock 0 books
Ludwig Nohl 0 books
Francis William Newman 0 books
Anna Vyrubova 0 books
Reginald Wingate 0 books
Hervey Allen 0 books
Éric Zemmour 2 books
Avvakum 0 books
Bertrand Tavernier 0 books
Françoise Giroud 1 books
Sid Caesar 1 books
Owen Davis 0 books
Mahadev Desai 6 books
Vladimir Chertkov 0 books
John Schofield 0 books
J. C. Ryle 0 books
James Norman Hall 0 books
Thomas E. Watson 0 books
Marie Elizabeth Zakrzewska 0 books
Juliette Drouet 0 books
David Duke 2 books
Totò 1 books
Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet 0 books
William Dieterle 2 books
Marianne North 1 books
Charles Churchill 0 books
Richard Taylor 0 books
A. Lawrence Lowell 0 books
Mary MacLane 0 books
Anton Schindler 0 books
L. G. Deich 0 books
Jean-Pierre Camus 0 books
Annie Sprinkle 3 books
Lucy Parsons 3 books
Robert Seton-Watson 0 books
Fanny Stevenson 0 books
Sugawara no Takasue no Musume 0 books
Arthur Helps 0 books
Jacob D. Cox 0 books
Carl Akeley 0 books
Charles Hazelius Sternberg 0 books
Bent Larsen 0 books
Milarepa 0 books
William MacGillivray 0 books
William Scoresby 0 books
William Lilly 0 books
Sir Harry Smith, 1st Baronet 0 books
Ceija Stojka 1 books
Wright brothers 0 books
James Kirke Paulding 0 books
Nicholas Rowe 0 books
John Peel 4 books
5th Dalai Lama 0 books
Margot Asquith 0 books
Billy Bragg 5 books
Felix von Luckner 0 books
Leslie Ward 0 books
Raymond Massey 2 books
Eleanor Anne Ormerod 0 books
Iva Zanicchi 0 books
Chaim Topol 1 books
Efraim Zuroff 3 books
Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff 0 books
Edmund Waller 0 books
Max Beer 0 books
Mary Boykin Chesnut 0 books
Aleksandr Aleksandrov 1 books
William Wilson Hunter 0 books
Robert Blair 0 books
Albert Hastings Markham 0 books
Sirindhorn 1 books
Fabrizio De André 0 books
Mario Adorf 0 books
Zainab Salbi 2 books
Evelyn Wood 0 books
Cap Anson 0 books
Ebenezer Prout 0 books
Hans von Bülow 2 books
Marina Vlady 0 books
2nd Dalai Lama 0 books
Aleksey Batalov 0 books
Murray Walker 2 books
Elizabeth Fry 4 books
Quim Torra 3 books
Washington Luís 0 books
Isaac Stern 0 books
Nicolaus of Damascus 0 books
Tanzan Ishibashi 0 books
Robert Hossein 0 books
Venantius Fortunatus 0 books
Denis Healey 4 books
Terry McAuliffe 3 books
George Dewey 2 books
Philipp Bouhler 1 books
Barbara Boxer 3 books
Helen Thomas 3 books
Rita Lee 0 books
Gertrude the Great 0 books
Gregor Gysi 0 books
Kurt Diemberger 4 books
Dora Maar 0 books
Jean-Claude Pascal 0 books
Michael Lonsdale 0 books
Markus Wolf 2 books
Maria Schell 0 books
Frédéric Mitterrand 1 books
William S. Hart 4 books
Vera Zasulich 0 books
Hardy Krüger 1 books
Apolo Ohno 1 books
Jean-Claude Brialy 0 books
Juliette Récamier 1 books
Lilya Brik 0 books
Tavo Burat 0 books
Johan Vilhelm Snellman 0 books
8th Dalai Lama 0 books
Eunapius 0 books
Ibn Hisham 0 books
Yekaterina Vorontsova-Dashkova 0 books
Paolo Giovio 2 books
Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse 0 books
Ata-Malik Juvayni 0 books
Mykola Kostomarov 1 books
Annemarie Schwarzenbach 0 books
Danielle Mitterrand 0 books
Rebecca Latimer Felton 3 books
Anne Lister 0 books
Thomas of Celano 1 books
Beate Klarsfeld 0 books
Stefan Stambolov 0 books
Olivier Weber 0 books
Antiochus Kantemir 0 books
Wincenty Witos 0 books
Ibn Khallikan 0 books
Joel Benton 0 books
Milena Rudnytska 0 books
Marpa Lotsawa 0 books
Alejandro Lerroux 0 books
Jacques Amyot 0 books
Jovanotti 0 books
Arnold Houbraken 1 books
Richard Bohringer 0 books
Sofia Yablonska 0 books
Francisco Umbral 0 books
Nicholas of Japan 0 books
Dmitry Bykov 0 books
Joachim Neander 0 books
William Kamkwamba 0 books
Marin Barleti 1 books
Magnus Felix Ennodius 0 books
Erkki Tuomioja 0 books
Götz von Berlichingen 0 books
Christine Kaufmann 0 books
Nikolai Morozov 0 books
Mohamed Choukri 1 books
Francisco Pacheco 0 books
Vera Komissarzhevskaya 0 books
Rosa von Praunheim 1 books
Rodulfus Glaber 0 books
Vladislav Khodasevich 0 books
Ram Prasad Bismil 0 books
Elizabeth Sherrill 4 books
John Sherrill 1 books

Biography FAQ

Who are the best biography authors?: The best-known biography authors here, ranked by how widely they are read and written about, are Charles Darwin, Victor Hugo, Abraham Lincoln, Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud.
What are the best biography series?: Voices of Utopia by Svetlana Alexievich, The Outline of History by H. G. Wells and The Black Flame Trilogy by W. E. B. Du Bois — each listed in reading order.
Can I read biography books for free?: Yes. 3,082 biography books by these authors are in the public domain in the US and free to read here.

Best-known biography authors

Charlie Chaplin

Helen Keller

Kamala Harris

Pearl S. Buck

George H. W. Bush

Malala Yousafzai

Freddie Mercury

Michelle Obama

Boris Johnson

Elizabeth Taylor

Svetlana Alexievich

Robert Graves

Carrie Fisher

Drew Barrymore

Annie Ernaux

George Harrison

Anthony Bourdain

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Biography series in reading order

Free biography classics

Classic biography authors

Charles Darwin

Victor Hugo

Abraham Lincoln

Friedrich Nietzsche

Sigmund Freud

Leonardo da Vinci

Winston Churchill

Anton Chekhov

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

George Washington

Martin Luther

Augustine of Hippo

Napoleon

Benjamin Franklin

Lord Byron

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Ludwig van Beethoven

H. G. Wells

All biography authors

Biography FAQ