List of biographers

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

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

Biographers

A–G

• 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 and Laura Riding
• James Boswell (1740–1795) – Samuel Johnson
• Paula Broadwell (born 1972) – David Petraeus
• 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 and 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 (born 1929) – Carson McCullers, Paul Bowles and John Dos Passos
• Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897–1999) – Clive of India and Max Müller
• Na Chokkan (born 1977) – India; Sachin Tendulkar, Dhirubhai Ambani, Charlie Chaplin, Rahul Dravid, Azim Premji, Lakshmi Mittal, Walt Disney and various others in Tamil
• Vincent Cronin (born 1924) – Napoleon, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and Catherine the Great
• Michael Daly – Father Mychal Judge
• Douglas Day (1932–2004) – Malcolm Lowry
• Thomas DiLorenzo (born 1954) – Abraham Lincoln
• Damon DiMarco – 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) – Pete Maravich
• Kitty Ferguson (born 1941) – Stephen Hawking
• 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 and Oliver Cromwell
• Russell Freedman (born 1929) – Abraham Lincoln
• Douglas S. Freeman (1886–1953) – Robert E. Lee and 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 and Sir Francis Bacon
• Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) – Charlotte Brontë
• Peter Gay (born 1923) – Sigmund Freud and Mozart
• Gary Giddins (born 1948) – Bing Crosby, Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong
• Martin Gilbert England – Winston Churchill
• Josef Greiner (circa 1886–1947) – Adolf Hitler
• Adrian Greenwood (born 1973) – Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde
• Peter Guralnick (born 1943) – music industry writer

H–M

• Seppo Heikinheimo (1938–1997) – Aarre Merikanto, Oskar Merikanto, Martti Talvela
• Charles Higham – Errol Flynn, Howard Hughes and 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
• Walter Isaacson (born 1952) – Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Henry Kissinger
• Edward Jablonski(1922–2004) – George Gershwin and Irving Berlin
• Elizabeth Jenkins (1905-2010) – Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, Lady Caroline Lamb Joseph Lister and Elizabeth I
• Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) – Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
• Ernest Jones (1879–1958) – Sigmund Freud
• Kathleen Jones – Katherine Mansfield
• Landon Jones – William Clark
• Kitty Kelley (born 1942) – Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Nancy Reagan
• Marvin Kitman (born 1929) – George Washington and Bill O'Reilly
• Edward Klein – Hillary Clinton
• Robert Lacey – Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Grace, Henry VIII, Henry Ford and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex
• Hermione Lee – Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf
• Sidney Lee (1856–1926) – Dictionary of National Biography, William Shakespeare and Queen Victoria
• J. Michael Lennon – Norman Mailer
• Santeri Levas (1899–1987) – Clara & Robert Schumann, Jean Sibelius
• Barbara Levick (born 1932) – English; specialising in Roman emperors
• Gail Levin (born 1948) – Edward Hopper, Judy Chicago and Lee Krasner
• Roger Lewis (born 1960) – Anthony Burgess
• Kenneth S. Lynn (1923–2001) – Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin and Ernest Hemingway
• Brenda Maddox – Elizabeth Taylor, D. H. Lawrence, Nora Joyce, W. B. Yeats and Rosalind Franklin
• Norman Mailer (1923–2007) – Marilyn Monroe, Lee Harvey Oswald and Gary Gilmore
• Koryun (5th century) – Mesrop Mashtots
• William Manchester (1922–2004) – Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur and 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 and Margaret Fuller
• André Maurois (1885–1967) – Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Benjamin Disraeli, Victor Hugo, Balzac and Sir Alexander Fleming
• David McCullough – Harry Truman, John Adams and Theodore Roosevelt
• Grazyna Miller (born 1957)
• Merle Miller (1919–1986) – Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson
• Miyoshi Kiyotsura (847–918) – Japanese scholar-statesman
• Ibn al-Qaisarani (1056–1113) – medieval Arab biographer of previous medieval biographers
• Simon Sebag-Montefiore (born 1965) – Grigory Potyomkin and Joseph Stalin
• Thomas Moore (1779–1852) – Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Lord Byron and Lord Edward Fitzgerald
• Jeffrey Morgan – Alice Cooper and The Stooges
• Ted Morgan (born 1932) – William Burroughs, Somerset Maugham and Franklin Delano Roosevelt
• Andrew Morton (born 1953) – Princess Diana, Monica Lewinsky and Tom Cruise

N–Z

• Ira Nadel (born 1943) – Canada; Leon Uris, David Mamet, Tom Stoppard and Leonard Cohen
• Alanna Nash (born 1950) – United States
• Nakane Kōtei(1839–1913) – Japanese writer
• Philip Nel (born 1969) – United States; Crockett Johnson and 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")
• Arnold Rampersad (born 1941) – Langston Hughes
• 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
• Anton Schindler (1795–1864) – Ludwig van Beethoven
• Anne Sebba – Wallis Simpson
• Lee Server – Robert Mitchum and 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 and 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 and Rasputin
• Jenny Uglow – 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, Susan Butcher, Benjamin Banneker, Annie Oakley, The Wright Brothers, Cesar Chavez and Juliette Gordon Low
• Alison Weir (born 1937) – Elizabeth I of England, Eleanor of Aquitane, Mary, Queen of Scots
• Theodore White (1915–1986) – Lyndon B. Johnson and 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

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 (1930–2009) – United States;Angela's Ashes (Pulitzer Prize)
• Ronald Skirth (1897–1977) – United Kingdom; The Reluctant Tommy

See also

• Lists of writers