Biography Books

A Burlesque Autobiography

Mark Twain

Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance is an 1871 book by American author Mark Twain. Published by Sheldon & Co. in 1871, the book consists of two short stories: "A Burlesque Aut..

To the Gold Coast for Gold

Sir Richard Francis Burton

The following extract from 'Wanderings in West Africa,' a book which I wrote in 1862 and published (anonymously) in 1863, will best explain the reasons which lately sent me to Western Africa:—In sever..

Homer and His Age

Andrew Lang

Homer and His Age is a biographical work by Andrew Lang. In Homer and the Epic, ten or twelve years ago, I examined the literary objections to Homeric unity. These objections are chiefly based on alle..

The House of the Dead

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The House of the Dead is a semi-autobiographical novel published in 1860–2 in the journal Vremya by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky, which portrays the life of convicts in a Siberian prison camp. The..

Memoirs of My Life and Writings

Edward Gibbon

Memoirs of My Life and Writings is an account of the historian Edward Gibbon's life, compiled after his death by his friend Lord Sheffield from six fragmentary autobiographical works Gibbon wrote duri..

The Longest Journey

E.M. Forster

The Longest Journey is a bildungsroman by E. M. Forster, first published in 1907. It is the second of Forster's six published novels, following Where Angels Fear to Tread and preceding A Room With A V..

The New Life (La Vita Nuova)

Dante Alighieri

The New Life (La Vita Nuova) is a text by Dante Alighieri published in 1295. It is an expression of the medieval genre of courtly love in a prosimetrum style, a combination of both prose and verse.The..

Memoirs of a Cavalier

Daniel Defoe

Memoirs of a Cavalier is a work of historical fiction by Daniel Defoe, set during the Thirty Years' War and the English Civil Wars. The full title, which bore no date, was: Memoirs of a Cavalier; or A..