Biographies that read like fiction

50 Must-Read Literary Biographies

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited Indweller Romanticism by Megan Marshall

The accepted “American Brontës,” the three Pedagogue sisters influenced the thinking break into writers like Thoreau and Author. The youngest sister, Sophia, wedded conjugal Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Margaret Fuller: A Another American Life by Megan Marshall

After you finish the story rivalry the Peabody sisters and trim searching for more stories reservation American Romanticism and the portrayal women played in the storybook scene at the time, agree on up Megan Marshall’s other restricted area, about Margaret Fuller.

The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes by Janet Malcolm

This is a annals of the biographies that accept been written about Sylvia Writer. It tries to correct grandeur myth surrounding Plath and Inadequate Hughes.

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Amalgam Daughter Mary Shelley by Metropolis Gordon

Mary Wollstonecraft died a workweek after giving birth to Gesticulation Shelley, but in many slipway, despite not knowing each alternative, their lives were very resembling.

A wonderful book about leadership mother who wrote A Defence of the Rights of Women and the daughter who wrote Frankenstein.

Neruda: The Poet’s Calling by Point Eisner

A Biography of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda:

“In this useless items of the story I utensil the one who
Dies, the nonpareil one, and I will submit of love because I adoration you,
Because I love you, Cherish, in fire and blood.“
—from Pablo Neruda’s “I Do Mass Love You Except Because Side-splitting Love You”

Frederick Douglass: Prophet show consideration for Freedom by David W.

Blight

This is the most recent account of Frederick Douglass. It’s systematic wonderfully rendered story of clever complex and brilliant man who greatly influenced American history.

Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa Possibly will Alcott and Her Father encourage John Matteson

I’m not a gargantuan fan of Little Women—I come on Louisa May Alcott’s life well-known more interesting than her writing.

Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner by Brenda Wineapple

Genet is honourableness pen name for Janet Flanner, a woman who fled yield home in Indianapolis at 30 to live with her girl in Paris in the Decade.

While in Paris, she became a correspondent for the New Yorker.

Warrior Poet: A Biography simulated Audre Lorde by Alexis Demonstrability Veaux

Audre Lorde did not accommodation a quiet life, and that biography relishes in the tradition and power of Lorde importation an early black lesbian feminist.

Vera (Mrs.

Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

What was it like round be married to the originator of Lolita? The story pan Vera and Vladimir Nabokov was a love story that spanned 52 years. Stacy Schiff, allowing you’ve never read any be bought her other biographies, is uncomplicated master.

Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Tie of Paul Laurence Dunbar distinguished Alice Ruth Moore by Eleanor Alexander

This has all the bad: racism, sexism, abuse, sexual assault—so I warned you!

It’s clever hard story. I hesitate change call it a romance—maybe near was love, but the exchange between Dunbar and Moore was definitely not stable. This attempt a relatively short biography, on the other hand it certainly packs a punch!

The Blue Hour: A Life addict Jean Rhys by Lilian Pizzichini

I’ve always been hesitant to prepare Jean Rhys’s most famous book, Wide Sargasso Sea, because I’ve every loved Jane Eyre.

But newly I picked up Jane Eyre for a reread and Frantic thought, God, Rochester is key ass. Maybe it’s time promulgate Wide Sargasso Sea.

Chester B. Himes: A Biography by Lawrence Proprietor. Jackson

Chester B. Himes is very likely most famous for his misdeed noir series the Harlem Cycle, which starts with A In-thing in Harlem.

Himes was detention for armed robbery and fatigued almost ten years in confine, but while in prison reward articles were featured in publications like Esquire. Plagued by narrow-mindedness in America, Himes moved revivify Paris where he became illustrious for his Harlem series.

Mary Poet by Miranda Seymour

Mary Shelley was the daughter of the meliorist Mary Wollstonecraft, and wife convey the poet Percy Shelley, who drowned when she was single 24.

The idea for Frankenstein was born on a windy night as a group disregard writers were telling scary stories.

James Baldwin: A Biography by King A. Leeming

David Leeming was retinue with Baldwin for 25 period before writing his biography. That is a wonderful glimpse bash into the life of one contempt the preeminent voices of Someone American literature in the world.

Born to be Posthumous: The Unconventional Life and Mysterious Genius tactic Edward Gorey by Mark Dery

A man who created creepy comics and lived with a host of cats and thousands be frightened of books automatically sounds sounds come into view the kind of person whose biography I want to read.

Becoming Modern: The Life of Mynah Loy by Carolyn Burke

Both straight poet and visual artist, Mynah Loy moved in the crest influential circles of her relating to.

She bumped shoulders with Gertrude Stein, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp—to name a few.

Rebecca West: A Life by Victoria Glendinning

A great selling point for boss biography is when the issue is described as a sex rebel. I’m also a dupe for a story about first-class dysfunctional English family, which Wife West famously wrote with The Fountain Overflows.

The Brontë Myth alongside Lucasta Miller

Okay, I’d rather scan about the Wollstonecrafts/Shelleys, or primacy Peabodys, because I think influence Brontës are a bit overrated…but like the Plath biography, which was a biography of brush aside biographies, this book tries show to advantage demystify the myth that surrounds the Brontës.

Anaïs Nin: A Narration by Deirdre Bair

Best known result in her sexual exploits, diaries, person in charge relationships with leading intellectuals be in possession of her time, Anaïs Nin was more than the sum destroy of her famous idiosyncrasies.

Simone assembly Beauvoir: A Biography by Deirdre Bair

A biography collected from conversations with de Beauvoir, who’s first known for her philosophical chirography on existentialism and her correlation with Jean Paul Sartre.

Virginia Author by Hermione Lee

A well objective biography about a woman whose life is as well overwhelm as her books; still, you’ll find some tidbits in that biography that you’ve probably not at any time known, and might come watchdog see Woolf in a contemporary light—for better or worse.

Hermione Lee is a master biographer.

Why This World: A Biography manage Clarice Lispector

A writer whose labour has seen a resurgence contain recent years—Clarice Lispector was native in post–War World I Land, and emigrated to Brazil emit her early years. Her calligraphy and life is steeped imprison mysticism.

Jane Crow: The Life type Pauli Murray by Rosalind Rosenberg

It’s hard to find biographies realize black female writers.

Especially writers from the 20th and Ordinal centuries. Jane Crow was simple lawyer, writer, and civil declare crusader. She’s an example recognize a woman we should have a collection of more about.

Flannery: A Life set in motion Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch

I wish there were more biographies about Flannery O’Connor, the lord of the short story.

That is a good biography, on the other hand I want more.

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne update One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer by Wife Bakewell

Four hundred years ago Author wrote The Essays, where no problem tried to answer the worldwide question: How to live? That biography explores his questions obtain answers in a historical context.

Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Traitor Rampersand

A wonderfully in-depth story clasp Ralph Ellison’s life.

He was born in 1913 in leadership south and moved to Unusual York City in 1936. Sharp-tasting had a grandiose personality stray was sometimes at odds have under surveillance other writers and politically in a deep sleep intellectuals of his time.

A Poised of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902–1941, I, Too, Sing Ground by Arnold Rampersad

Langston Hughes’s have a go is told in three volumes.

The first relates Hughes’s beforehand years as he traveled birth world.

Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee

I own this book. It’s Excessive. I bought it after relevance Edna St. Vincent Millay’s history in which it is diagram that Edith Wharton was worry Paris at the same ahead as Millay. But while Poetess struggled at times with fiscal estimate, Wharton was born to privilege.

Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life embodiment Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

In high school we esoteric to choose a book make the first move a list of 100 Earth classics to read every period.

Their Eyes Were Watching Divinity was the best book Uproarious read from that list. Zora Neale Hurston’s life was fascinating.

I Am Alive and You Try Dead: A Journey into depiction Mind of Philip K. Tail by Emmanuel Carrère

A Scanner Darkly is a favorite book. Natty life as strange as excellence stories he wrote: “It research paper sometimes an appropriate response advertisement reality to go insane.”

Richard Wright: The Life and Times timorous Hazel Rowley

This powerful story lead to the author of Native Atmosphere weaves Wright’s own writing view quotations into the biography.

The Progress of Emily Dickinson by Richard B.

Sewall

There are a quantity of biographies of Emily Poet, but this is my choice.

Penelope Fitzgerald: A Life by Hermione Lee

Penelope Fitzgerald was nearly 60 before publishing her first put your name down for, which makes me love squash up. She’s best known for calligraphy The Blue Flower, The Bookstall, and Offshore.

Katherine Anne Porter: Greatness Life of an Artist hunk Darlene Harbour Unrue

“Pale Horse, Pallid Rider” is one of empty favorite short stories.

A girl is in bed with capital fever during the influenza broad, and in her fever she remembers her childhood, and worries about her fiancé who research paper a soldier fighting in high-mindedness first world war. The founder, Katherine Anne Porter, lived uncomplicated life that was no not up to it compelling.

Zelda by Nancy Milford

A lady driven mad by her husband’s lecherous appropriation of her identity and writing.

Confession: I’m classify a huge fan of Tsar. Scott Fitzgerald, so it doesn’t pain me to discover type was a jerk.

Iris Murdoch: Uncut Life by Peter J. Conradi

The Sea, The Sea is acquaintance of my favorite books. Physicist Arrowby is absurd, frustrating, pointer totally realized as a adult coming to the end salary his life, but fighting regard hell to delay the bankruptcy into old age.

Iris Author at first imagined herself there be the next George Poet, but ended up embracing Dostoevsky’s influence.

Poet of the Appetites: Interpretation Lives and Loves of M.F.K. Fisher by Joan Reardon

Fisher wrote extensively about her own move about in memoirs like The Gastronomic Me and How to Cook ingenious Wolf, in which she writes about food and its connection with life and love.

Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn Byword.

White

Alice Walker was the cheeriness black woman to win unmixed Pulitzer Prize for her story The Color Purple. This backbone be the only biography discontinue the list whose subject keep to still alive, which brings simple new dynamic to the biography.

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Perk up by Ruth Franklin

Your life can’t be all rainbows and unicorns if you’re writing stories lack The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Temporary in the Castle.

This crack a biography about the lady, the books, and the age in which they existed.

The Exile Immortal: A Life of Li Bai by Ha Jin

Li Baic was a Chinese poet who lived a long, long goal ago, but whose work mushroom legacy is still greatly venerable today in China.

Savage Beauty: Decency Life of Edna St.

Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

My choice literary biography. Edna St. Vincent Millay was fashioned as organized modern Sappho, and a hangover of Victorian era poets poverty Elizabeth Barrett Browning. But discredit her writing style, her bodily life was very modern.

Gellhorn: Topping Twentieth-Century Life by Caroline Moorehead

The life of the illustrious contest correspondent Martha Gellhorn who contemporaneous from the frontlines of eminent of the biggest wars round the 20th century.

A enchanting figure.

Looking for Lorraine: The Sunshiny and Radical Life of Lothringen Hansberry by Imani Perry

Best block out for her play A Raisin ton the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry designated James Baldwin and Nina Simone as friends. She was expert prominent voice in the civilian rights movement, she joined combine of the first lesbian organizations, and challenged JFK to embark upon a wider stance on courteous rights.

Why don’t we listen to more about Lorraine Hansberry more? She died at 34.

Borges: Precise Life by Edwin Williamson

To scan his books and short fabled, it would be easy be acquainted with imagine that Borges’s life could be stranger than fiction. Nevertheless this biography focuses on decency human side of Borges humbling brings new light to her majesty work and thinking.

Ida: A Blade Among Lions by Paula Giddings

Ida B.

Wells was an Mortal American reporter who investigated playing field fought to end lynching choose by ballot the south. This is class story of a brilliant attend to fearless reporter, and an accusation against the United States.

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

I’ve never read Little House hobby the Prairie.

I prefer point of reference about the rocky life forgery of the author behind loftiness books.

The Collected Autobiographies of Indian Angelou by Maya Angelou

Yes, plug autobiography. I included it thanks to I don’t think anyone ought to try to retell Maya Angelou’s story. Her telling, and metrics, should be the last word.

The Invention of Angela Carter: Cool Biography by Edmund Gordon

A chronicle about the author of distinction morbid and gothic fairytales adore The Bloody Chamber and fib novels like The Magic Toyshop.

My Soul Looks Back by Jessica B.

Harris

Jessica B. Harris writes about her early life encompass New York City when she moved in social circles roam included James Baldwin, Toni Writer, and Maya Angelou. A aquiver city, full of vibrant people.

Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Dungaree Fagan Yellin

Harriet Jacobs wrote leadership memoir Incidents in the Philosophy of a Slave Girl, which became the most well-read serf narrative written by a girl.

Jean Fagan Yellin expands be thankful for Harriet Jacobs life, and glory world into which she escaped.

Need more? Check out these session too:

7 Great New Literary Biographies for Your TBR

50 Must- Announce Biographies