Biographers
Biographers are authors who write an account of another person's life, while autobiographers are authors who write their own biography.
Countries of working life: Ab=Arabia, AG=Ancient Greece, Al=Australia, Am=Armenian, AR=Ancient Rome, Au=Austria, AH=Austria/Hungary, Ca=Canada, En=England, Fl=Finland, Fr=France, Ge=Germany, Id=Indonesia, In=India, Ir=Ireland, Is=Israel, Jp=Japan, Nw=Norway, SA=South Africa, Sc=Scotland, SL=Sierra Leone, So=Somalia, Sp=Spain, Sw=Sweden, TT=Trinidad & Tobago, US=United States, Ve=Venezuela, Wl=Wales
This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.
A–G
- Hermann Abert (Ge, 1871–1927) – Robert Schumann, Niccolò Jommelli, W. A. Mozart
- Alfred Ainger (En, 1837–1904) – Charles Lamb
- Ellis Amburn (US, 1933–2018) – Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Jack Kerouac, Elizabeth Taylor, Warren Beatty and Janis Joplin
- Rudolph Angermüller (Ge, 1940–2021) – Antonio Salieri, W. A. Mozart
- Núria Añó (Sp. born 1973) – Salka Viertel
- Marie Célestine Amélie d'Armaillé (1830–1918) – Catherine de Bourbon, Élisabeth of France, Marie Leszczyńska, Marie Antoinette, Marie-Thérèse, Duchess of Angoulême, Septimanie d'Egmont), Désirée Clary
- Rosemary Ashton (Sc/En, born 1947) – George Eliot
- Deborah Baker (US, living) – Allen Ginsberg and Laura Riding
- Elizabeth Biddulph, Baroness Biddulph (En, 1834–1916) – Charles Yorke, 4th Earl of Hardwicke
- Jennie M. Bingham (US, 1859–1933) — Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, Charlotte Brontë, Margaret Fuller, Charles Lamb, Briton Rivière
- Lucie Boissonnas (1839–1877) – Robert E. Lee
- James Boswell (Sc, 1740–1795) – Samuel Johnson
- Paula Broadwell (US, born 1972) – David Petraeus
- Max Brod (AH/Is, 1884–1968) – Franz Kafka
- Leslie Brody (US, born 1952) – Jessica Mitford
- Vincent Brome (En, 1910–2004) – various writers
- Egerton Brydges (En, 1762–1837) – English writers
- Andrea Cagan (US, living) – Diana Ross
- Thomas Carlyle (Sc, 1795–1881) – John Sterling and Frederick the Great
- Robert A. Caro (US, born 1935) – Robert Moses and Lyndon B. Johnson
- Humphrey Carpenter (En, 1946–2005) – J. R. R. Tolkien, W. H. Auden, Ezra Pound, Evelyn Waugh, Benjamin Britten Robert Runcie and Spike Milligan
- Virginia Spencer Carr (US, 1929–2012) – Carson McCullers, Paul Bowles and John Dos Passos
- Charles Castle (En, 1939–2013) – Noël Coward, Joan Crawford, Oliver Messel, Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, La Belle Otero, Richard Tauber
- George Cavendish (En, 1494 – c. 1562) – Thomas Wolsey
- Nirad C. Chaudhuri (In, 1897–1999) – Clive of India and Max Müller
- Ron Chernow (US, born 1949)
- Na Chokkan (In, born 1977) – Sachin Tendulkar, Dhirubhai Ambani, Charlie Chaplin, Rahul Dravid, Azim Premji, Lakshmi Mittal, Walt Disney etc. in Tamil
- Vincent Cronin (En, 1924–2011) – Napoleon, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and Catherine the Great
- Douglas Day (US, 1932–2004) – Malcolm Lowry
- Thomas DiLorenzo (US, born 1954) – Abraham Lincoln
- Damon DiMarco (US, born 1971) – Roy Simmons
- Richard Ellmann (US, 1918–1987) – James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and W. B. Yeats
- Alberthiene Endah (Id, living) – Chrisye, Krisdayanti and Raam Punjabi
- Ivar Eskeland (Nw, 1927–2005) – decorated with the Order of the Falcon and winner of the Bastian Prize for his biographies of Gisle Straume and Snorri Sturluson
- Wayne Federman (US, born 1959) – Pete Maravich
- Elaine Feinstein (En, 1930–2019) – Marina Tsvetaeva, Pushkin, Ted Hughes
- Mary Fels (US, 1863–1953) – Joseph Fels
- Kitty Ferguson (US, born 1941) – Stephen Hawking
- William Fitzstephen (En, died 1190) – Thomas Becket
- Amanda Foreman (En/US, born 1968) – Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
- Esther G. Frame (US, 1840–1920) – Esther G. Frame
- Antonia Fraser (En, born 1932) – Mary, Queen of Scots and Oliver Cromwell
- Russell Freedman (US, 1929–2018) – Abraham Lincoln
- Douglas Southall Freeman (US, 1886–1953) – Robert E. Lee and George Washington
- Leonie Frieda (Sw/En, born 1956) – Catherine de' Medici
- Jean Overton Fuller (En, 1915–2009) – Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Algernon Charles Swinburne and Sir Francis Bacon
- Elizabeth Gaskell (En, 1810–1865) – Charlotte Brontë
- Peter Gay (US, 1923–2015) – Sigmund Freud and W. A. Mozart
- Gary Giddins (US, born 1948) – Bing Crosby, Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong
- Martin Gilbert (En, 1936–2015) Winston Churchill
- Annie Somers Gilchrist (US, 1841–1912)
- Josef Greiner (Au, c. 1886–1947) – Adolf Hitler
- Adrian Greenwood (En, 1973–2016) – Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde
- Peter Guralnick (US, born 1943) – Elvis Presley and Sam Phillips
- Gamal Abdul Nasir Zakaria (ID, born 1965) – Mohammad Natsir
H–M
- Seppo Heikinheimo (Fl, 1938–1997) – Aarre Merikanto, Oskar Merikanto and Martti Talvela
- Charles Higham (England/US, 1931–2012) – Errol Flynn, Howard Hughes and Katharine Hepburn
- Thomas Jefferson Hogg (En, 1792–1862) – Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Richard Holmes (England, born 1945) – Mary Shelley, Coleridge, The Age of Wonder
- Michael Holroyd (En, born 1935) – Lytton Strachey
- Imogen Holst (En, 1907–1984) – Gustav Holst
- Marilla Baker Ingalls (US, 1828–1902) – Mah Po
- Walter Isaacson (US, born 1952) – Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs and Henry Kissinger
- Edward Jablonski (US, 1922–2004) – George Gershwin and Irving Berlin
- Elizabeth Jenkins (En, 1905–2010) – Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, Lady Caroline Lamb Joseph Lister and Elizabeth I
- Samuel Johnson (En, 1709–1784) – Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
- Ernest Jones (Wl, 1879–1958) – Sigmund Freud
- Kathleen Jones (EnAl, born 1946) – Katherine Mansfield
- Landon Jones (US, living) – William Clark
- Alicia Jurado (Arg, 1922–2011) – William Henry Hudson, Cunninghame Graham, Jorge Luis Borges
- Shakuntala Karandikar (In, 1931–2018) – Chandrashekhar Agashe
- Kitty Kelley (US, born 1942) – Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Nancy Reagan
- Jacqueline Kent (Al, born 1947) – Kenneth Cook, Beatrice Davis, Julia Gillard and Hephzibah Menuhin
- Harriette A. Keyser (US, 1841–1936) — Henry C. Potter
- Jennie Ellis Keysor (US, 1860–1945) - Raphael
- Marvin Kitman (US, 1929–2023) – George Washington and Bill O'Reilly
- Edward Klein (US, born 1937) – Hillary Clinton
- Randy Kryn (US, born 1949) — James Bevel
- Robert Lacey (En, born 1944) – Elizabeth II, Princess Grace, Henry VIII, Henry Ford and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex
- Jane Lane (En, 1905–1978) – Titus Oates
- Hermione Lee (En, born 1948) – Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf
- Sidney Lee (En, 1856–1926) – Dictionary of National Biography, William Shakespeare and Queen Victoria
- J. Michael Lennon (US, born 1942) – Norman Mailer
- Santeri Levas (Fl, 1899–1987) – Clara & Robert Schumann, Jean Sibelius
- Barbara Levick (En, born 1932) – specialising in Roman emperors
- Gail Levin (US, born 1948) – Edward Hopper, Judy Chicago and Lee Krasner
- Roger Lewis (Wl, born 1960) – Anthony Burgess
- Martha D. Lincoln (US, 1838–1911) — John Wesley Powell
- Kenneth S. Lynn (US, 1923–2001) – Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin and Ernest Hemingway
- Brenda Maddox (US/E, 1932–2019) – Elizabeth Taylor, D. H. Lawrence, Nora Joyce, W. B. Yeats and Rosalind Franklin
- Norman Mailer (US, 1923–2007) – Marilyn Monroe, Lee Harvey Oswald and Gary Gilmore
- Koryun (Am, 5th century) – Mesrop Mashtots
- William Manchester (US, 1922–2004) – Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur and John F. Kennedy
- Cristina Marcano (Ve, born 1960) – Hugo Chávez
- Bruce Marshall (Sc, 1899–1987) – Wing Commander F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas
- John Matteson (US, born 1961) – Amos Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott and Margaret Fuller
- André Maurois (Fr, 1885–1967) – Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Benjamin Disraeli, Victor Hugo, Balzac and Sir Alexander Fleming
- David McCullough (US, 1933–2022) – Harry S. Truman, John Adams and Theodore Roosevelt
- Merle Miller (US, 1919–1986) – Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson
- James McGrath Morris (US, born 1954) – Joseph Pulitzer, Charles Chapin, Ethel Payne, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos
- Miyoshi Kiyotsura (Jp, 847–918) – Japanese scholar-statesman
- Ibn al-Qaisarani (Ab, 1056–1113) – medieval Arab biographer of previous medieval biographers
- Simon Sebag Montefiore (En, born 1965) – Grigory Potemkin and Joseph Stalin
- Thomas Moore (Ir, 1779–1852) – Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Lord Byron and Lord Edward FitzGerald
- Jeffrey Morgan (Ca, living) – Alice Cooper and The Stooges
- Ted Morgan (US, born 1932) – William S. Burroughs, W. Somerset Maugham and Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Andrew Morton (En, born 1953) – Princess Diana, Monica Lewinsky and Tom Cruise
N–Z
- Ira Nadel (Ca, born 1943) – Leon Uris, David Mamet, Tom Stoppard and Leonard Cohen
- Alanna Nash (US, born 1950)
- Nakane Kōtei (Jp, 1839–1913)
- Philip Nel (US, born 1969) – Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss
- Cornelius Nepos (AR, 100–24 BC)
- Nizamuddin Asir Adrawi (IN, 1926–2021)
- Iris Origo (En, 1902–1988)
- James Parton (US, 1822–1891) – Horace Greeley, Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Voltaire
- Hesketh Pearson (En, 1887–1964)
- F. David Peat (En, 1928–2017) – David Bohm
- Plutarch (AG, 46–127)
- H. F. M. Prescott (En, 1896–1972) – Mary I of England ("Bloody Mary")
- Arnold Rampersad (TT, born 1941) – Langston Hughes
- Piers Paul Read (En, born 1941) – Alec Guinness
- James Redpath (US, born En, 1833–1891) – John Brown (abolitionist)
- E. J. Richmond (US, 1825–1918) – Harriet Hosmer
- W. Andrew Robinson (En, born 1957) – Satyajit Ray and Rabindranath Tagore
- Romain Rolland (Fr, 1866–1944) – Beethoven, Michelangelo, Leo Tolstoy and Gandhi
- Henry Salt (En, 1851–1939) – Shelley, Richard Jefferies and Henry David Thoreau
- Carl Sandburg (US, 1878–1967) – Abraham Lincoln
- Stacy Schiff (US, born 1961) – United States; Véra Nabokov, Benjamin Franklin, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Cleopatra and the Witches of Salem
- Anton Schindler (Ge, 1795–1864) – Ludwig van Beethoven
- Anne Sebba (En, born 1951) – Wallis Simpson
- Lee Server (US, living) – Robert Mitchum and Ava Gardner
- Miranda Seymour (En, born 1948) – Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace, Hellé Nice, Mary Shelley
- Kirit Shelat (In, born 1946) – India
- Dawn Langley Simmons (En, 1937–2000) – Princess Margaret, Margaret Rutherford and Jacqueline Kennedy
- Roy S. Simmonds (En, 1925–2000) – John Steinbeck, William March and Edward O'Brien
- Jean Edward Smith (US, 1932–2019) – Ulysses S. Grant, John Marshall and Lucius D. Clay
- Laura J. Snyder (US, born 1964) – Charles Babbage, John F.W. Herschel, William Whewell, Richard Jones, Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Oliver Sacks
- Dava Sobel (US, born 1947) – John Harrison, Sister Maria Celeste, daughter of Galileo, Galileo
- Maynard Solomon (US, 1930–2020) – Beethoven, W. A. Mozart
- Leslie Stephen (En, 1832–1904) – Dictionary of National Biography, Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift George Eliot and Thomas Hobbes
- Jane Agnes Stewart (US, 1860–1944) — Frances Willard
- Irving Stone (US, 1903–1989)
- Lytton Strachey (En, 1880–1932) – eminent Victorians
- Marshall Terrill (US, born 1963) – Steve McQueen, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Billy Graham, Pete Maravich
- Bankole Timothy (SL, 1923–1994), Kwame Nkrumah
- Nick Tosches (US, 1949–2019) – Jerry Lee Lewis, Dean Martin and Sonny Liston
- Meriol Trevor (En, 1919–2000) – John Henry Newman, Philip Neri, Pope John XXIII, Thomas Arnold and James II of England
- Henri Troyat (Fr, 1911–2007) – Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Gogol, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Turgenev, Maxim Gorky and Rasputin
- Jenny Uglow (En, born 1947) – Elizabeth Gaskell, William Hogarth, Thomas Bewick and the Lunar Society
- Rosa Kershaw Walker (US, 1840s–1909) – eminent Americans
- Blanche Warre-Cornish (En, 1848–1922) – William Thackeray
- Alison Weir (En, born 1937) – Elizabeth I of England, Eleanor of Aquitane, Mary, Queen of Scots
- Sam Weller (US) – Ray Bradbury
- Theodore White (US, 1915–1986) – Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon
- Alice Willard (US, 1860–1936) – Bertha Baur
- A. N. Wilson (En, born 1950) – Sir Walter Scott, John Milton, Hilaire Belloc, Leo Tolstoy, C. S. Lewis, Jesus Iris Murdoch and John Betjeman
- Molly Worthen (US, born 1981) – Charles Hill, American diplomat and Yale professor
- Marguerite Young (US, 1908–1995) – Eugene V. Debs
See also: List of autobiographies
- Brianda de Acuña (1576–1630), Virtudes de la V. M. Teresa de Iesus, Carmelita Descalza del convento de Valladolid, en el siglo Doña Brianda de Acuña Vela
- Henry Brooks Adams (US, 1838–1918) – The Education of Henry Adams
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali (So, born 1969) – Infidel: My Life
- Nirad C. Chaudhuri (In, 1897–1999) – The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
- Henry Cockburn (Sc, 1779–1854) – Memorials of His Time
- Frederick Douglass (US, c. 1817–February 20, 1895) – Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), "The Heroic Slave" in Autographs for Freedom (1853), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881, revised 1892)
- Jens Jacob Eschels (Ge, 1757–1842) – first seafarer's autobiography in German
- Benjamin Franklin (US, 1706–1790) – The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- Mahatma Gandhi (In, 1869–1948) – The Story of My Experiments with Truth
- Lee Iacocca (US, 1924–2019) – Iacocca: An Autobiography
- Nelson Mandela (SA, 1918–2013) – Long Walk to Freedom
- Frank McCourt (Ir/US, 1930–2009) – Angela's Ashes (Pulitzer Prize)
- Ronald Skirth (En, 1897–1977) – The Reluctant Tommy
