Biography/Memoir
Life stories and memoirs of both famous and not so famous people.
Madame Bovary [en] (1857) 
Gustave Flaubert
Francis Steegmuller's beautifully executed double portrait of Madame Bovary and her maker is a remarkable and unusual biographical study, a sensitive and detailed account of how an unpromising young man turns himself into one of the world's greatest novelists. Steegmuller starts with the young...
Genres: Biography/Memoir, Romance
The Longest Journey [en] (1907)
Edward Morgan Forster
Trilling described The Longest Journey as "perhaps the most brilliant, the most dramatic, and the most passionate" of E.M. Forster's works. Certainly it's the most autobiographical -- but its form confuses many. Full of sudden death, hopeless love, and quaintly doomed relationships -- and yet...
Genres: Biography/Memoir, Coming of Age
The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton [en] (1720)
Daniel Defoe
The narrative describes the life of an Englishman, stolen from a well-to-do family as a child and raised by Gypsies who eventually makes his way to sea. One half of the book concerns Singleton's crossing of Africa and the later half concerns his life as a pirate. Defoe's description of piracy...
Genres: Biography/Memoir, Nautical
My Bondage and My Freedom [en] (1855)
Frederick Douglass
My Bondage and My Freedom is an autobiographical slave narrative written by Frederick Douglass and published in 1855. It is the second of three autobiographies written by Douglass, and is mainly an expansion of his first (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass), discussing in greater detail...
Genres: Biography/Memoir, Non-Fiction, Slave Narrative
The Memoirs of Victor Hugo [en] (1899)
Victor Hugo
This volume of memoirs has a double character--historical and intimate. The life of a period, the XIX Century, is bound up in the life of a man, VICTOR HUGO. This is not a diary of events arranged in chronological order, nor is it a continuous autobiography. It is less and it is more, or rather,...
Genre: Biography/Memoir
The Diary of a U-boat Commander [en] (1918) 
Anonymous
The diary of a World War One U-Boat commander. As well as being a fascinating glimpse of life on the German U-boats during the intense submarine blockade, this also reminds us there were humans involved - on both sides of the action - as we read too of the intimate thoughts and intense love of a...
Genres: Biography/Memoir, Diaries and Journals, Nautical, War
The Golden Age [en] (1895)
Kenneth Grahame
The question of lions came up, but Charlotte wanted none of it. "No, thank you," she said, firmly; "you'll be chained up till I'm quite close to you, and then you'll be loose, and you'll tear me in pieces. I know your lions!" "No, I won't; I swear I won't," protested Edward. "I'll be quite a new...
Genres: Biography/Memoir, Fantasy, Young Readers
Childhood [en] (1852)
Leo Tolstoy
The artistic work of Leo Tolstoy has been described as "nothing less than one tremendous diary kept for over fifty years." This particular "diary" begins with Tolstoy's first published work,CHILDHOOD, which was written when he was only 23. A semi-autobiographical work, it recounts two days in...
Genre: Biography/Memoir
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass [en] (1845)
Frederick Douglass
Born into a family of slaves, Frederick Douglass educated himself through sheer determination. His unconquered will to triumph over his circumstances makes his one of America's best and most unlikely success stories. Douglass' own account of his journey from slave to one of America's great...
Genres: Biography/Memoir, Slave Narrative
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin [en] (1887)
Charles Darwin
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin is a work on the life of Charles Darwin, written by the man himself. This biographical work about one of the most important naturalists in history is key in understanding the events in his life which lead him to make some of the most important evolutionary...
Genres: Biography/Memoir, Science