List of biographers

Biographers are authors who write an account of another person's life, while autobiographers are authors who write their own biography.

Articles about lives of notable authors writing or have written about lives of other notable (or not) people

• Alfred Ainger (1837–1904) - Charles Lamb
• Ellis Amburn (born 1933) - Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Jack Kerouac, Elizabeth Taylor, Warren Beatty, and Janis Joplin
• Rosemary Ashton (born 1947) - George Eliot
• Deborah Baker - Allen Ginsberg, Laura Riding
• James Boswell (1740–1795) - Samuel Johnson
• Max Brod (1884–1968) - Franz Kafka
• Leslie Brody (born 1952) - Jessica Mitford
• Vincent Brome (1910–2004) - various writers
• Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges (1762–1837) - English writers
• Andrea Cagan
• Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) - John Sterling and Frederick the Great
• Robert A. Caro (born 1935) - Robert Moses, Lyndon Johnson
• Alberthiene Endah - Chrisye, Krisdayanti, and Raam Punjabi
• Humphrey Carpenter (1946–2005) - J. R. R. Tolkien, W. H. Auden, Ezra Pound, Evelyn Waugh, Benjamin Britten Robert Runcie and Spike Milligan
• Virginia Spencer Carr (1929- ) - Carson McCullers, Paul Bowles and John Dos Passos
• Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897–1999) - Clive of India, Max Müller
• Vincent Cronin (born 1924) - Napoleon, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great and others
• Michael Daly - Father Mychal Judge
• Douglas Day (1932–2004) - Malcolm Lowry
• Thomas DiLorenzo (born 1954) - Abraham Lincoln
• Damon DiMarco - United States - Biographies include Roy Simmons, Tower Stories, and Heart of War
• Richard Ellmann (1918–1987) - James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and William Butler Yeats
• Ivar Eskeland (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 (born 1959) - NBA basketball legend Pete Maravich
• Kitty Ferguson (born 1941) - Stephen Hawking
• Mike Fitzgerald - boxer Archie Moore
• William Fitzstephen (died 1190) - Thomas a Becket
• L. G. (Pat) Flannery - (1894–1964) - Wyoming pioneer John Hunton (1839–1928) and his diaries
• Amanda Foreman, (born 1968) - Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
• Antonia Fraser (born 1932) - Mary, Queen of Scots, Oliver Cromwell
• Russell Freedman (born 1929) - Abraham Lincoln and others
• Douglas S. Freeman (1886–1953) - Robert E. Lee, George Washington
• Leonie Frieda (born 1956) - Catherine de' Medici
• Jean Overton Fuller (1915–2009) - Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Sir Francis Bacon
• Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) - Charlotte Brontë
• Peter Gay (born 1923) - Sigmund Freud, Mozart
• Martin Gilbert England - Winston Churchill
• Kay Collett Goss - Wilbur D. Mills
• Josef Greiner (circa 1886-1947) - Adolf Hitler
• Peter Guralnick (born 1943) - music industry writer
• Charles Higham - Errol Flynn, Howard Hughes, Katharine Hepburn
• Thomas Jefferson Hogg (1792–1862) - Percy Bysshe Shelley
• Richard Holmes (born 1945) - Mary Shelley, Coleridge, The Age of Wonder
• Michael Holroyd (born 1935)
• Imogen Holst (1907–1984) - Gustav Holst
• Edward Jablonski(1922–2004) - George Gershwin, Irving Berlin
• Elizabeth Jenkins (1905-2010) - Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, Lady Caroline Lamb Joseph Lister, Elizabeth I
• Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) - Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
• Ernest Jones (1879–1958) - Sigmund Freud
• Kathleen Jones - Katherine Mansfield
• Kitty Kelley (born 1942) - Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Nancy Reagan
• Edward Klein author of The Truth About Hillary
• Robert Lacey - Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Grace, Henry VIII, Henry Ford, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex
• Hermione Lee - Edith Wharton
• Sidney Lee (1856–1926) - Dictionary of National Biography, William Shakespeare and Queen Victoria
• Barbara Levick (born 1932) - English; specialising in Roman emperors
• Roger Lewis (born 1960) - Anthony Burgess
• Kenneth S. Lynn (1923-2001) - Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, Ernest Hemingway
• Brenda Maddox - Elizabeth Taylor, D. H. Lawrence, Nora Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Rosalind Franklin
• Norman Mailer (1923–2007) - Marilyn Monroe, Lee Harvey Oswald, Gary Gilmore
• William Manchester (1922–2004) - Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur, John F. Kennedy
• Cristina Marcano - Hugo Chávez
• Bruce Marshall (1899–1987) - Wing Commander F.F.E. Yeo-Thomas
• John Matteson (born 1961) - Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Margaret Fuller
• André Maurois (1885–1967) - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Benjamin Disraeli, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Sir Alexander Fleming and others
• David McCullough - Harry Truman, John Adams, and Theodore Roosevelt
• Grazyna Miller (born 1957)
• Merle Miller (1919–1986) - Harry S. Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson (U.S. Presidents)
• Miyoshi Kiyotsura (847-918) a Japanese scholar-statesman.
• Ibn al-Qaisarani (1056-1113), Medieval Arab biographer of previous medieval biographers
• Simon Sebag-Montefiore (1965- ), Grigory Potyomkin, Joseph Stalin
• Thomas Moore (1779-1852) - Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Lord Byron, Lord Edward Fitzgerald
• Jeffrey Morgan - Alice Cooper, The Stooges
• Ted Morgan (born 1932) - William Burroughs, Somerset Maugham, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• Andrew Morton (1953 - ) - Princess Diana, Monica Lewinsky, Tom Cruise and others
• Ira Nadel (born 1943), Canada - Leon Uris, David Mamet, Tom Stoppard, Leonard Cohen
• Alanna Nash (born 1950), United States
• Nakane Kōtei(1839-1913),Japanese writer
• Philip Nel (born 1969), United States - Crockett Johnson, Ruth Krauss
• Cornelius Nepos, (100-24 BC), ancient Rome
• James Parton (1822–1891) - Horace Greeley, Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Voltaire
• Hesketh Pearson (1887–1964)
• F. David Peat (born 1928) - David Bohm
• Plutarch (46-127), ancient Greece
• H. F. M. Prescott (1896–1972) - Mary I of England ('Bloody Mary')
• Piers Paul Read (born 1941) - Alec Guinness
• W. Andrew Robinson (born 1957) - Satyajit Ray and Rabindranath Tagore
• Romain Rolland (1866–1944) - Beethoven, Michelangelo, Leo Tolstoy, and Gandhi
• Henry Salt, (1851–1939) - English authority on Shelley, Richard Jefferies, and Henry David Thoreau
• Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) - Abraham Lincoln
• Anne Sebba - Wallis Simpson
• Lee Server - Robert Mitchum, Ava Gardner
• Kirit Shelat (born 1946) - India
• Dawn Langley Simmons (1937–2000) - Princess Margaret, Margaret Rutherford, and Jacqueline Kennedy
• Roy S. Simmonds (1925–2000) - John Steinbeck, William March, and Edward O'Brien
• Jean Edward Smith (born 1932) - Ulysses S. Grant, John Marshall, and Lucius D. Clay
• Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) - Dictionary of National Biography, Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift George Eliot and Thomas Hobbes
• Irving Stone (1903–1989)
• Lytton Strachey (1880–1932) - Eminent Victorians
• Marshall Terrill (born 1963) - many biographies including Steve McQueen, David Thompson, and Pete Maravich.
• Nick Tosches (born 1949) - Jerry Lee Lewis, Dean Martin, Sonny Liston
• Meriol Trevor (1919–2000) - John Henry Newman, Philip Neri, Pope John XXIII, Thomas Arnold, and James II of England
• Henri Troyat (1911–2007) - Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Gogol, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Anton Chekhov, Ivan Turgenev, Maxim Gorky, Rasputin and others
• Jenny Uglow - many, including Elizabeth Gaskell, William Hogarth, Thomas Bewick and the Lunar Society
• Ginger Wadsworth (born 1945) - Julia Morgan, Rachel Carson, John Muir, Laura Ingalls Wilder, John Burroughs Benjamin Banneker and others
• Alison Weir, (born 1937) - Elizabeth I of England, Eleanor of Aquitane, Mary, Queen of Scots
• Theodore White (1915–1986) - Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon
• A. N. Wilson (born 1950) - Sir Walter Scott, John Milton, Hilaire Belloc, Leo Tolstoy, C. S. Lewis, Jesus Iris Murdoch, and John Betjeman
• Molly Worthen (born 1981) - United States - Charles Hill, American diplomat and Yale professor
• Marguerite Young (1908-1995) - Eugene V. Debs
• Na Chokkan (born 1977) - India - Sachin Tendulkar, Dhirubhai Ambani, Charlie Chaplin, Rahul Dravid, Azim Premji, Narayana Murthi, Lakshmi Mittal, Walt Disney and various others in Tamil.
• Anton Schindler (1795–1864) - Ludwig van Beethoven.
• Paula Broadwell (1972 - ) - David Petraeus

Some notable autobiographers

• Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918) - The Education of Henry Adams
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali (born 1969) - Somalia - Infidel (book)
• Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897–1999) - The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
• Henry Cockburn (1779–1854) - Scottish - Memorials of his Time
• Frederick Douglass (circa 1817 – February 20, 1895) - American - A 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 (1757–1842) - first seafarer's autobiography in German
• Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) - American The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) - Indian The Story of My Experiments with Truth
• Lee Iacocca (born 1924) - United States Iacocca: An Autobiography
• Nelson Mandela (born 1918) - South Africa Long Walk to Freedom
• Frank McCourt (born 1930-July 19, 2009) - United States - Angela's Ashes (Pulitzer Prize)
• Ronald Skirth (1897 - 1977) - United Kingdom The Reluctant Tommy

See also

• Lists of writers
• Category:Biographers

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