The Online Books Page

Biography as a literary form

See also what's at your library, or elsewhere.

• Authorship
• Prose literature
• Biography

• Autobiography

• Biography -- Technique

• Chinese Autobiographical Writing: An Anthology of Personal Accounts (Seattle: University of Washington Press, c2023), ed. by Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Cong Zhang, and Ping Yao (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• May Her Likes Be Multiplied: Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt (2001), by Marilyn Booth (HTML at UC Press)
• Beyond Exemplar Tales: Women's Biography in Chinese History (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, c2011), ed. by Joan Judge and Hu Ying (HTML and PDF with commentary at UC Press)
• Declarations of Independency in Eighteenth-Century American Autobiography (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, c1998), by Susan Clair Imbarrato (PDF at Tennessee)
• Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1989), by Françoise Lionnet (PDF and Epub with commentary at Cornell Open)
• Lytton Strachey (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1943), by Max Beerbohm (HTML in Canada; NO US ACCESS)
• Last Lectures by Wilfrid Ward: Being the Lowell Lectures, 1914, and Three Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution, 1915 (London et al.: Longmans, Green, and co., 1918), by Wilfrid Ward, ed. by Mrs. Wilfrid Ward and Maisie Ward (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Ancient Lives of Vergil, with an Essay on the Poems of Vergil in Connection with His Life and Times (Oxford: At the Clarendon press, 1879), by Henry Nettleship (page images at HathiTrust)

• Declarations of Independency in Eighteenth-Century American Autobiography (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, c1998), by Susan Clair Imbarrato (PDF at Tennessee)
• Strindberg and Autobiography (London: Ubiquity Press and Norvik Press, 2013), by Michael Robinson (PDF at Ubiquity Press)
• Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the Arabic Literary Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), ed. by Dwight Fletcher Reynolds (HTML at UC Press)
• Confessions of a Prosaic Dreamer: Charles Lamb's Art of Autobiography (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1984), by Gerald Monsman (page images at HathiTrust)
• Rousseau's Occasional Autobiographies (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c1992), by Susan K. Jackson (PDF at Ohio State)
• Fractured Borders: Reading Women's Cancer Literature (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c2005), by Mary K. DeShazer (page images at HathiTrust)
• Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1996), by Fred L. Gardaphé (page images at HathiTrust)
• George Moore and the Autogenous Self: The Autobiography and Fiction (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, c1994), by Elizabeth Grubgeld (Epub with commentary at Syracuse)

• Chinese Autobiographical Writing: An Anthology of Personal Accounts (Seattle: University of Washington Press, c2023), ed. by Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Cong Zhang, and Ping Yao (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)

• Faithful Transgressions in the American West: Six Twentieth-Century Mormon Women's Autobiographical Acts (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2004), by Laura L. Bush (PDF with commentary at usu.edu)

• Auto/Biography (British Sociological Association journal; volumes online cover 2004-2006) (partial serial archives)

• Autobiographical Voices: Race, Gender, Self-Portraiture (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1989), by Françoise Lionnet (PDF and Epub with commentary at Cornell Open)
• Faithful Transgressions in the American West: Six Twentieth-Century Mormon Women's Autobiographical Acts (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2004), by Laura L. Bush (PDF with commentary at usu.edu)
• The Mary Carleton Narratives, 1663-1673: A Missing Chapter in the History of the English Novel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1914), ed. by Ernest Bernbaum (multiple formats at archive.org)

• Indian Captivities, or, Life in the Wigwam: Being True Narratives of Captives Who Have Been Carried Away by the Indians, From the Frontier Settlements of The United States, From the Earliest Period to the Present Time (Auburn, NY: Derby and Miller; Buffalo: Derby, Orton and Mulligan, 1853), ed. by Samuel G. Drake (multiple formats at archive.org)

• Incidents Connected with the Life of Selim Aga, a Native of Central Africa (Aberdeen, Scotland: Published for the author, 1846), by Selim Aga (HTML and TEI at UNC)
• Memoir of Pierre Toussaint, Born a Slave in St. Domingo (Boston: Crosby, Nichols, and Company, 1854), by Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee (HTML and TEI at UNC)

• The Life of Rev. Robert Anderson (Macon, GA: Printed for the author, 1892), by Robert Anderson (HTML and TEI at UNC)

• Autobiography of Omar ibn Said, Slave in North Carolina, 1831 (extracted from the American Historical Review; Washington: American Historical Association, 1925), by Omar ibn Said, ed. by J. Franklin Jameson (HTML and TEI with commentary at UNC)

• Before the War, and After the Union: An Autobiography (Boston: Gold Mind, c1929), by Sam Aleckson (HTML and TEI at UNC)

• Life and Narrative of William J. Anderson, Twenty-Four Years a Slave (Chicago: Daily Tribune Book and Job Printing Office, 1857), by William J. Anderson (HTML and TEI at UNC)

Items below (if any) are from related and broader terms.

• Bad Ideas About Writing (Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Libraries Digital Publishing Institute, c2017), ed. by Cheryl E. Ball and Drew M. Loewe (PDF with commentary at wvu.edu)
• Whose Book is it Anyway? A View From Elsewhere on Publishing, Copyright and Creativity (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, c2019), ed. by Janis Jefferies and Sarah Kember (multiple formats with commentary at Open Book Publishers)
• Signature Pieces: On the Institution of Authorship (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1988), by Peggy Kamuf (PDF and EPub with commentary at Cornell Open)
• The Work of Authorship (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), ed. by Mireille M. M. van Eechoud (PDF with commentary at oapen.org)
• A Vindication of the Press (1718) (Augustan Reprint Society publication #29; Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1951), by Daniel Defoe, contrib. by Clinton Williams (Gutenberg text)
• The Psychology of Writing Success (New York: The Business bourse, 1933), ed. by J. George Frederick, contrib. by A. A. Brill, Thyra Samter Winslow, Mary Austin, Floyd Dell, and Thomas H. Uzzell (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Act of Writing: A Media Theory Approach, by Daniel Chandler (Word with commentary in the UK)
• Anonymity: An Enquiry (Hogarth Essays #12; London: L. and V. Woolf, 1925), by E. M. Forster
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust; US access only
• The Art of Short Story Writing (Cincinnati: Publishers Syndicate, 1910), by George Randolph Chester
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• The Art of Story Writing: Facts and Information About Literary Work of Practical Value of Both Amateur and Professional Writers (New York: Sully and Kleinteich, 1913), by Nathaniel C. Fowler (multiple formats at archive.org)
• The Author's Craft, by Arnold Bennett (Gutenberg text)
• The Author's Year Book and Guide for 1904: Including Some 600 Names and Addresses of Publishers and Publications to Whom Manuscripts May be Sold (1904), ed. by W. E. Price (page images at HathiTrust)
• Beyond Life: Dizain des Demiurges (New York: R. M. McBride and Co., 1919), by James Branch Cabell (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Craftsmanship of Writing (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1920), by Frederic Taber Cooper (multiple formats at archive.org)
• The Fiction Factory: Being the Experience of a Writer Who, for Twenty-Two Years, Has Kept a Story-Mill Grinding Successfully (published under "John Milton Edwards" pen name; Ridgewood, NJ: The Editor Company, c1912), by William Wallace Cook
  • Gutenberg text
  • page images at Google; US access only
• If You Don't Write Fiction (New York: R. M. McBride Co., 1920), by Charles Phelps Cushing (Gutenberg text and page images)
• Intentions (London: Methuen and Co., 1913), by Oscar Wilde (Gutenberg text)
• Intentions: The Decay of Lying; Pen, Pencil and Poison; The Critic as Artist; The Truth of Masks (New York: Brentano's, 1905), by Oscar Wilde, contrib. by Percival Pollard
  • page images at HathiTrust
  • multiple formats at archive.org
• Side Lights (London: T. F. Unwin, 1893), by James Runciman, ed. by John F. Runciman, contrib. by Grant Allen and W. T. Stead (Gutenberg text)
• The Writer's Book: A Compendium of Information Upon Matters Pertaining to the Trade of Authorship (Franklin, OH: J. K. Reeve, c1922), by James Knapp Reeve (page images at HathiTrust)
• How to Write and Sell a Novel (revised from Why Write a Novel?; New York: Woodford Press, 1948), by Jack Woodford (page images at HathiTrust)
• Trials of Authorship: Anterior Forms and Poetic Reconstruction from Wyatt to Shakespeare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), by Jonathan V. Crewe (HTML at UC Press)
• The Art of Inventing Characters (Franklin, OH: J. K. Reeve, 1922), by Georges Polti, trans. by Lucille Ray (page images at HathiTrust)
• Books Fatal to Their Authors, by P. H. Ditchfield (Gutenberg text)
• Conjectures on Original Composition, by Edward Young (HTML at Toronto)
• Essays in the Art of Writing, by Robert Louis Stevenson (Gutenberg text)
• My First Book (London: Chatto and Windus, 1894), contrib. by Walter Besant, William Clark Russell, Grant Allen, Hall Caine, George R. Sims, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle, M. E. Braddon, F. W. Robinson, H. Rider Haggard, R. M. Ballantyne, Israel Zangwill, Morley Roberts, David Christie Murray, Marie Corelli, Jerome K. Jerome, John Strange Winter, Bret Harte, Arthur Quiller-Couch, Robert Williams Buchanan, and Robert Louis Stevenson (Gutenberg text and illustrated HTML)
• My Maiden Effort: Being the Personal Confessions of Well-Known American Authors as to Their Literary Beginnings (Garden City, NY and Toronto: Pub. for the Authors' League of America by Doubleday, Page and Co., 1921), ed. by Gelett Burgess (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)
• The Principles of Success in Literature, by George Henry Lewes (Gutenberg text)
• The Principles of Success in Literature (London et al.: W. Scott Pub. Co., ca. 1898), by George Henry Lewes, ed. by T. Sharper Knowlson
  • multiple formats at archive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• The Stories Editors Buy and Why (Boston: Small, Maynard and Co., c1921), ed. by Jean Wick (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Crip Authorship: Disability as Method, ed. by Mara Mills and Rebecca Sanchez (multiple formats with commentary at NYU Press)

More items available under broader and related terms at left.