Biography and Autobiography Books

Biographies were initially composed of the lives of the great and the powerful. This was because they were considered to be a small part of history and that historical interest was much more important than the individual. In the middle ages biography was seen as the vehicle for the promotion of religious views and teachings and this was because access to education and the written word was primarily in the hands of the religious sector. As power began to shift from the religious authorities the focus of biography also changed. Works on kings, knights and the like came to the fore. In the 15th century the invention of the printing press had a huge effect which promoted literacy In the 20th century, with the advent of mass education, there began to appear an improvement in the standard of the biography. Psychology had developed and it was no longer acceptable to produce long tracts of continual praisings. The consequence of the Industrial Revolution was that the general public became more condescending of what was put before them. At the same time the spread of subjects widened to include artists, celebrities and people of popular interest. Autobiographies came to feature more at this time. In the present day, as the publishing industry grew and grew, biography and autobiography has grown in prominence. There are books on sport, music, actors, comediens and basically, people with a story to tell, all in the classification of biography and autobiography.

Biographies

James Dean by Paul Alexander


Beryl Grey by Gordon Anthony


John Osborne by Martin Banham


Story of the Dingo Baby by John Burke


Amelia Earhart by John Bryson


Milena Jesenska by Margarete Buber Neumann


Christopher Columbus by John Stewart Collis


Herman Melville byAndrew Delbanco


Arnold Bennett by Margaret Drabble


Mozart by Alfred Einstein


Fatal Englishman by Sebastian Faulks


Dylan Thomas by Paul Ferris


Seamus Heaney by Thomas C Foster


Charlotte Bronte by Winifred Gerin


Lady Hester by Lorna Gibb


Alexander Solzhenitsyn by Giovanni Grazzini


C. S. Lewis by Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper


Marilyn Monroe by Fred Lawrence Guiles


John Thaw by Sheila Hancock


Neil Armstrong by James R Hansen


Marlon Brando by Charles Higham


John Betjeman by Bevis Hillier


Dashiell Hammett by Diane Johnson


Ford by Robert Lacey


Princess of Wales by Ladybird Books


Lee Harvey Oswald by Priscilla Johnson McMillan


Muhammad Ali by Davis Miller


John Nash by Sylvia Nasar


German Men of Letters by Alex Natan


W B Yeats by William H Pritchard


Dean Koontz by Katherine Ramsland


Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra by Thomas Roscoe


Michael Jackson by J Randy Tarraborrelli


Orson Welles by David Thomson


Kate Moss by Fred Vermorel


Helen Mirren by Ivan Waterman


Rasputin by Colin Wilson


Kenneth Tynan by Kathleen Tynan


Sky Burial by Xue Xinran

Autobiographies

Gerry Adams


Maya Angelou


Jean Dominique Bauby


Cecil Beaton


John Berger


Michael Bond


Noel Browne


Augusten Burroughs


Bob Champion


Jung Chang


Austin Clarke


Annie Dillard


Waris Dirie


J P Donleavy


Constantine Fitzgibbon


Mikal Gilmore


Granta Magazine


James Herriot


Alex Higgins


Livia E Bitton Jackson


Griff Rhys Jones


Peter Kay


Brian Keenan


Adrian Kenny


Laurie Lee


Doris Lessing


Frank McCourt


Malachy McCourt


Michael McIntyre


Thomas Merton


Spike Milligan


Sheila Mooney


Christina Noble


Christopher Nolan


Barack Obama


Sean O'Casey


Frank O'Connor


Nuala O'Faolain


Michael Parkinson


Ger Philpott


Robert Sabbag


George Sand


Jean Paul Sartre


Elisa Segrave


Alice Sebold


Constantin Stanislavski


Janet Street-Porter


George Thomas


Elie Wiesel


Toby Young