World famous biographies
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The 30 Best Biographies of All Time
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Blog – Posted on Monday, Jan 21
Biographer Richard Holmes once wrote that his work was “a kind of pursuit… writing about the pursuit of that fleeting figure, in such a way as to bring them alive in the present.”
At the risk of sounding cliché, the best biographies do exactly this: bring their subjects to life. A great biography isn’t just a laundry list of events that happened to someone. Rather, it should weave a narrative and tell a story in almost the same way a novel does. In this way, biography differs from the rest of nonfiction.
All the biographies on this list are just as captivating as excellent novels, if not more so. With that, please enjoy the 30 best biographies of all time — some historical, some recent, but all remarkable, life-giving tributes to their subjects.
If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of great biographies out there, you can also take our second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized biography recommendation 😉
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1. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nas
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Top 10 literary biographies
The idea of writing about authors is, for me, irresistible, and I’ve just published my seventh. It was about Gore Vidal and I have often recalled Vidal’s wise suggestion (made 30 years ago) that I should write about major figures, as important lives make for Important Lives.
Needless to say, anyone involved in this business becomes a student of Great Lives, and I’ve spent decades reading and rereading my favourite examples in the genre. The beginning of literary biography for anyone is probably Boswell’s classic life of Samuel Johnson (), an entertaining portrait of the inimitable sage, or such Victorian treasures as Elizabeth Gaskell’s astute life of Charlotte Brontë () or John Forster’s intimate biography of Charles Dickens (), his close friend. The 20th century saw many fine literary biographies emerging on both sides of the Atlantic, but it also produced numerous heavy and boring tomes: on the American side Mark Schorer’s staggeringly detailed life of Sinclair Lewis from or Joseph Blotner’s anaesthetising life of William Faulkner from ; on the British, Norman Sherry’s tedious three-volume life of Graham Greene, finished in
It is such a huge field that I have narrowed my 10 favourites down to the era after the second world war.
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The 50 Acceptably Biographies elect All Time
Crown The Swarthy Count: Majesty, Revolution, Treason, and description Real Misinformation of Cards Cristo, emergency Tom Reiss
Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, be oblivious to Craig Brown