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The 30 best biographies of all time.

Biographer Richard Holmes once wrote that his work was “a kind of pursuit… writing about the pursuit of that fleeting figure, in such a way as to bring them alive in the present.”

At the risk of sounding cliché, the best biographies do exactly this: bring their subjects to life. A great biography isn’t just a laundry list of events that happened to someone. Rather, it should weave a narrative and tell a story in almost the same way a novel does. In this way, biography differs from the rest of nonfiction .

All the biographies on this list are just as captivating as excellent novels , if not more so. With that, please enjoy the 30 best biographies of all time — some historical, some recent, but all remarkable, life-giving tributes to their subjects.

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of great biographies out there, you can also take our 30-second quiz below to narrow it down quickly and get a personalized biography recommendation  😉

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1. A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar

This biography of esteemed mathematician John Nash was both a finalist for the 1998 Pulitzer Prize and the basis for the award-winning film of the same name. Nasar thoroughly explores Nash’s prestigious career, from his beginnings at MIT to his work at the RAND Corporation — as well the internal battle he waged against schizophrenia, a disorder that nearly derailed his life.

2. Alan Turing: The Enigma: The Book That Inspired the Film The Imitation Game - Updated Edition by Andrew Hodges

Hodges’ 1983 biography of Alan Turing sheds light on the inner workings of this brilliant mathematician, cryptologist, and computer pioneer. Indeed, despite the title ( a nod to his work during WWII ), a great deal of the “enigmatic” Turing is laid out in this book. It covers his heroic code-breaking efforts during the war, his computer designs and contributions to mathematical biology in the years following, and of course, the vicious persecution that befell him in the 1950s — when homosexual acts were still a crime punishable by English law.

3. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton is not only the inspiration for a hit Broadway musical, but also a work of creative genius itself. This massive undertaking of over 800 pages details every knowable moment of the youngest Founding Father’s life: from his role in the Revolutionary War and early American government to his sordid (and ultimately career-destroying) affair with Maria Reynolds. He may never have been president, but he was a fascinating and unique figure in American history — plus it’s fun to get the truth behind the songs.

Prefer to read about fascinating First Ladies rather than almost-presidents? Check out this awesome list of books about First Ladies over on The Archive.

4. Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston

A prolific essayist, short story writer, and novelist, Hurston turned her hand to biographical writing in 1927 with this incredible work, kept under lock and key until it was published 2018. It’s based on Hurston’s interviews with the last remaining survivor of the Middle Passage slave trade, a man named Cudjo Lewis. Rendered in searing detail and Lewis’ highly affecting African-American vernacular, this biography of the “last black cargo” will transport you back in time to an era that, chillingly, is not nearly as far away from us as it feels.

5. Churchill: A Life by Martin Gilbert

Though many a biography of him has been attempted, Gilbert’s is the final authority on Winston Churchill — considered by many to be Britain’s greatest prime minister ever. A dexterous balance of in-depth research and intimately drawn details makes this biography a perfect tribute to the mercurial man who led Britain through World War II.

Just what those circumstances are occupies much of Bodanis's book, which pays homage to Einstein and, just as important, to predecessors such as Maxwell, Faraday, and Lavoisier, who are not as well known as Einstein today. Balancing writerly energy and scholarly weight, Bodanis offers a primer in modern physics and cosmology, explaining that the universe today is an expression of mass that will, in some vastly distant future, one day slide back to the energy side of the equation, replacing the \'dominion of matter\' with \'a great stillness\'--a vision that is at once lovely and profoundly frightening.

Without sliding into easy psychobiography, Bodanis explores other circumstances as well; namely, Einstein's background and character, which combined with a sterling intelligence to afford him an idiosyncratic view of the way things work--a view that would change the world. --Gregory McNamee

6. E=mc²: A Biography of the World's Most Famous Equation by David Bodanis

This “biography of the world’s most famous equation” is a one-of-a-kind take on the genre: rather than being the story of Einstein, it really does follow the history of the equation itself. From the origins and development of its individual elements (energy, mass, and light) to their ramifications in the twentieth century, Bodanis turns what could be an extremely dry subject into engaging fare for readers of all stripes.

7. Enrique's Journey by Sonia Nazario

When Enrique was only five years old, his mother left Honduras for the United States, promising a quick return. Eleven years later, Enrique finally decided to take matters into his own hands in order to see her again: he would traverse Central and South America via railway, risking his life atop the “train of death” and at the hands of the immigration authorities, to reunite with his mother. This tale of Enrique’s perilous journey is not for the faint of heart, but it is an account of incredible devotion and sharp commentary on the pain of separation among immigrant families.

8. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera

Herrera’s 1983 biography of renowned painter Frida Kahlo, one of the most recognizable names in modern art, has since become the definitive account on her life. And while Kahlo no doubt endured a great deal of suffering (a horrific accident when she was eighteen, a husband who had constant affairs), the focal point of the book is not her pain. Instead, it’s her artistic brilliance and immense resolve to leave her mark on the world — a mark that will not soon be forgotten, in part thanks to Herrera’s dedicated work.

9. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Perhaps the most impressive biographical feat of the twenty-first century, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about a woman whose cells completely changed the trajectory of modern medicine. Rebecca Skloot skillfully commemorates the previously unknown life of a poor black woman whose cancer cells were taken, without her knowledge, for medical testing — and without whom we wouldn’t have many of the critical cures we depend upon today.

10. Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, hitchhiked to Alaska and disappeared into the Denali wilderness in April 1992. Five months later, McCandless was found emaciated and deceased in his shelter — but of what cause? Krakauer’s biography of McCandless retraces his steps back to the beginning of the trek, attempting to suss out what the young man was looking for on his journey, and whether he fully understood what dangers lay before him.

11. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families by James Agee

"Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers that begat us.” From this line derives the central issue of Agee and Evans’ work: who truly deserves our praise and recognition? According to this 1941 biography, it’s the barely-surviving sharecropper families who were severely impacted by the American “Dust Bowl” — hundreds of people entrenched in poverty, whose humanity Evans and Agee desperately implore their audience to see in their book.

12. The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

Another mysterious explorer takes center stage in this gripping 2009 biography. Grann tells the story of Percy Fawcett, the archaeologist who vanished in the Amazon along with his son in 1925, supposedly in search of an ancient lost city. Parallel to this narrative, Grann describes his own travels in the Amazon 80 years later: discovering firsthand what threats Fawcett may have encountered, and coming to realize what the “Lost City of Z” really was.

13. Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang

Though many of us will be familiar with the name Mao Zedong, this prodigious biography sheds unprecedented light upon the power-hungry “Red Emperor.” Chang and Halliday begin with the shocking statistic that Mao was responsible for 70 million deaths during peacetime — more than any other twentieth-century world leader. From there, they unravel Mao’s complex ideologies, motivations, and missions, breaking down his long-propagated “hero” persona and thrusting forth a new, grislier image of one of China’s biggest revolutionaries.

14. Mad Girl's Love Song: Sylvia Plath and Life Before Ted by Andrew Wilson by Andrew Wilson

Titled after one of her most evocative poems, this shimmering bio of Sylvia Plath takes an unusual approach. Instead of focusing on her years of depression and tempestuous marriage to poet Ted Hughes, it chronicles her life before she ever came to Cambridge. Wilson closely examines her early family and relationships, feelings and experiences, with information taken from her meticulous diaries — setting a strong precedent for other Plath biographers to follow.

15. The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes

What if you had twenty-four different people living inside you, and you never knew which one was going to come out? Such was the life of Billy Milligan, the subject of this haunting biography by the author of Flowers for Algernon . Keyes recounts, in a refreshingly straightforward style, the events of Billy’s life and how his psyche came to be “split”... as well as how, with Keyes’ help, he attempted to put the fragments of himself back together.

16. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder

This gorgeously constructed biography follows Paul Farmer, a doctor who’s worked for decades to eradicate infectious diseases around the globe, particularly in underprivileged areas. Though Farmer’s humanitarian accomplishments are extraordinary in and of themselves, the true charm of this book comes from Kidder’s personal relationship with him — and the sense of fulfillment the reader sustains from reading about someone genuinely heroic, written by someone else who truly understands and admires what they do.

17. Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

Here’s another bio that will reshape your views of a famed historical tyrant, though this time in a surprisingly favorable light. Decorated scholar Andrew Roberts delves into the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, from his near-flawless military instincts to his complex and confusing relationship with his wife. But Roberts’ attitude toward his subject is what really makes this work shine: rather than ridiculing him ( as it would undoubtedly be easy to do ), he approaches the “petty tyrant” with a healthy amount of deference.

18. The Passage of Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson IV by Robert A. Caro

Lyndon Johnson might not seem as intriguing or scandalous as figures like Kennedy, Nixon, or W. Bush. But in this expertly woven biography, Robert Caro lays out the long, winding road of his political career, and it’s full of twists you wouldn’t expect. Johnson himself was a surprisingly cunning figure, gradually maneuvering his way closer and closer to power. Finally, in 1963, he got his greatest wish — but at what cost? Fans of Adam McKay’s Vice , this is the book for you.

19. Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

Anyone who grew up reading Little House on the Prairie will surely be fascinated by this tell-all biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Caroline Fraser draws upon never-before-published historical resources to create a lush study of the author’s life — not in the gently narrated manner of the Little House series, but in raw and startling truths about her upbringing, marriage, and volatile relationship with her daughter (and alleged ghostwriter) Rose Wilder Lane.

20. Prince: A Private View by Afshin Shahidi

Compiled just after the superstar’s untimely death in 2016, this intimate snapshot of Prince’s life is actually a largely visual work — Shahidi served as his private photographer from the early 2000s until his passing. And whatever they say about pictures being worth a thousand words, Shahidi’s are worth more still: Prince’s incredible vibrance, contagious excitement, and altogether singular personality come through in every shot.

21. Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss

Could there be a more fitting title for a book about the husband-wife team who discovered radioactivity? What you may not know is that these nuclear pioneers also had a fascinating personal history. Marie Sklodowska met Pierre Curie when she came to work in his lab in 1891, and just a few years later they were married. Their passion for each other bled into their passion for their work, and vice-versa — and in almost no time at all, they were on their way to their first of their Nobel Prizes.

22. Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter by Kate Clifford Larson

She may not have been assassinated or killed in a mysterious plane crash, but Rosemary Kennedy’s fate is in many ways the worst of “the Kennedy Curse.” As if a botched lobotomy that left her almost completely incapacitated weren’t enough, her parents then hid her away from society, almost never to be seen again. Yet in this new biography, penned by devoted Kennedy scholar Kate Larson, the full truth of Rosemary’s post-lobotomy life is at last revealed.

23. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford

This appropriately lyrical biography of brilliant Jazz Age poet and renowned feminist, Edna St. Vincent Millay, is indeed a perfect balance of savage and beautiful. While Millay’s poetic work was delicate and subtle, the woman herself was feisty and unpredictable, harboring unusual and occasionally destructive habits that Milford fervently explores.

24. Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes

Holmes’ famous philosophy of “biography as pursuit” is thoroughly proven here in his first full-length biographical work. Shelley: The Pursuit details an almost feverish tracking of Percy Shelley as a dark and cutting figure in the Romantic period — reforming many previous historical conceptions about him through Holmes’ compelling and resolute writing.

25. Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin

Another Gothic figure has been made newly known through this work, detailing the life of prolific horror and mystery writer Shirley Jackson. Author Ruth Franklin digs deep into the existence of the reclusive and mysterious Jackson, drawing penetrating comparisons between the true events of her life and the dark nature of her fiction.

26. The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel

Fans of Into the Wild and The Lost City of Z will find their next adventure fix in this 2017 book about Christopher Knight, a man who lived by himself in the Maine woods for almost thirty years. The tale of this so-called “last true hermit” will captivate readers who have always fantasized about escaping society, with vivid descriptions of Knight’s rural setup, his carefully calculated moves and how he managed to survive the deadly cold of the Maine winters.

27. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

The man, the myth, the legend: Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple, is properly immortalized in Isaacson’s masterful biography. It divulges the details of Jobs’ little-known childhood and tracks his fateful path from garage engineer to leader of one of the largest tech companies in the world — not to mention his formative role in other legendary companies like Pixar, and indeed within the Silicon Valley ecosystem as a whole.

28. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand

Olympic runner Louis Zamperini was just twenty-six when his US Army bomber crashed and burned in the Pacific, leaving him and two other men afloat on a raft for forty-seven days — only to be captured by the Japanese Navy and tortured as a POW for the next two and a half years. In this gripping biography, Laura Hillenbrand tracks Zamperini’s story from beginning to end… including how he embraced Christian evangelism as a means of recovery, and even came to forgive his tormentors in his later years.

29. Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov) by Stacy Schiff

Everyone knows of Vladimir Nabokov — but what about his wife, Vera, whom he called “the best-humored woman I have ever known”? According to Schiff, she was a genius in her own right, supporting Vladimir not only as his partner, but also as his all-around editor and translator. And she kept up that trademark humor throughout it all, inspiring her husband’s work and injecting some of her own creative flair into it along the way.

30. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt

William Shakespeare is a notoriously slippery historical figure — no one really knows when he was born, what he looked like, or how many plays he wrote. But that didn’t stop Stephen Greenblatt, who in 2004 turned out this magnificently detailed biography of the Bard: a series of imaginative reenactments of his writing process, and insights on how the social and political ideals of the time would have influenced him. Indeed, no one exists in a vacuum, not even Shakespeare — hence the conscious depiction of him in this book as a “will in the world,” rather than an isolated writer shut up in his own musty study.

If you're looking for more inspiring nonfiction, check out this list of 30 engaging self-help books , or this list of the last century's best memoirs !

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Definition of Biography

A biography is the non- fiction , written history or account of a person’s life. Biographies are intended to give an objective portrayal of a person, written in the third person. Biographers collect information from the subject (if he/she is available), acquaintances of the subject, or in researching other sources such as reference material, experts, records, diaries, interviews, etc. Most biographers intend to present the life story of a person and establish the context of their story for the reader, whether in terms of history and/or the present day. In turn, the reader can be reasonably assured that the information presented about the biographical subject is as true and authentic as possible.

Biographies can be written about a person at any time, no matter if they are living or dead. However, there are limitations to biography as a literary device. Even if the subject is involved in the biographical process, the biographer is restricted in terms of access to the subject’s thoughts or feelings.

Biographical works typically include details of significant events that shape the life of the subject as well as information about their childhood, education, career, and relationships. Occasionally, a biography is made into another form of art such as a film or dramatic production. The musical production of “Hamilton” is an excellent example of a biographical work that has been turned into one of the most popular musical productions in Broadway history.

Common Examples of Biographical Subjects

Most people assume that the subject of a biography must be a person who is famous in some way. However, that’s not always the case. In general, biographical subjects tend to be interesting people who have pioneered something in their field of expertise or done something extraordinary for humanity. In addition, biographical subjects can be people who have experienced something unusual or heartbreaking, committed terrible acts, or who are especially gifted and/or talented.

As a literary device, biography is important because it allows readers to learn about someone’s story and history. This can be enlightening, inspiring, and meaningful in creating connections. Here are some common examples of biographical subjects:

• political leaders
• entrepreneurs
• historical figures
• serial killers
• notorious people
• political activists
• adventurers/explorers
• religious leaders
• military leaders
• cultural figures

Famous Examples of Biographical Works

The readership for biography tends to be those who enjoy learning about a certain person’s life or overall field related to the person. In addition, some readers enjoy the literary form of biography independent of the subject. Some biographical works become well-known due to either the person’s story or the way the work is written, gaining a readership of people who may not otherwise choose to read biography or are unfamiliar with its form.

Here are some famous examples of biographical works that are familiar to many readers outside of biography fans:

• Alexander Hamilton (Ron Chernow)
• Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Caroline Fraser)
• Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson)
• Churchill: A Life (Martin Gilbert)
• The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (Simon Winchester)
• A Beautiful Mind (Sylvia Nasar)
• The Black Rose (Tananarive Due)
• John Adams (David McCullough)
• Into the Wild ( Jon Krakauer )
• John Brown (W.E.B. Du Bois)
• Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (Hayden Herrera)
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Rebecca Skloot)
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Doris Kearns Goodwin)
• Shirley Jackson : A Rather Haunted Life ( Ruth Franklin)
• the stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit (Michael Finkel)

Difference Between Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir

Biography, autobiography , and memoir are the three main forms used to tell the story of a person’s life. Though there are similarities between these forms, they have distinct differences in terms of the writing, style , and purpose.

A biography is an informational narrative and account of the life history of an individual person, written by someone who is not the subject of the biography. An autobiography is the story of an individual’s life, written by that individual. In general, an autobiography is presented chronologically with a focus on key events in the person’s life. Since the writer is the subject of an autobiography, it’s written in the first person and considered more subjective than objective, like a biography. In addition, autobiographies are often written late in the person’s life to present their life experiences, challenges, achievements, viewpoints, etc., across time.

Memoir refers to a written collection of a person’s significant memories, written by that person. Memoir doesn’t generally include biographical information or chronological events unless it’s relevant to the story being presented. The purpose of memoir is reflection and an intention to share a meaningful story as a means of creating an emotional connection with the reader. Memoirs are often presented in a narrative style that is both entertaining and thought-provoking.

Examples of Biography in Literature

An important subset of biography is literary biography. A literary biography applies biographical study and form to the lives of artists and writers. This poses some complications for writers of literary biographies in that they must balance the representation of the biographical subject, the artist or writer, as well as aspects of the subject’s literary works. This balance can be difficult to achieve in terms of judicious interpretation of biographical elements within an author’s literary work and consideration of the separate spheres of the artist and their art.

Literary biographies of artists and writers are among some of the most interesting biographical works. These biographies can also be very influential for readers, not only in terms of understanding the artist or writer’s personal story but the context of their work or literature as well. Here are some examples of well-known literary biographies:

Example 1:  Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay  (Nancy Milford)

One of the first things Vincent explained to Norma was that there was a certain freedom of language in the Village that mustn’t shock her. It wasn’t vulgar. ‘So we sat darning socks on Waverly Place and practiced the use of profanity as we stitched. Needle in, . Needle out, piss. Needle in, . Needle out, c. Until we were easy with the words.’

This passage reflects the way in which Milford is able to characterize St. Vincent Millay as a person interacting with her sister. Even avid readers of a writer’s work are often unaware of the artist’s private and personal natures, separate from their literature and art. Milford reflects the balance required on the part of a literary biographer of telling the writer’s life story without undermining or interfering with the meaning and understanding of the literature produced by the writer. Though biographical information can provide some influence and context for a writer’s literary subjects, style, and choices , there is a distinction between the fictional world created by a writer and the writer’s “real” world. However, a literary biographer can illuminate the writer’s story so that the reader of both the biography and the biographical subject’s literature finds greater meaning and significance.

Example 2:  The Invisible Woman: The Story of Nelly Ternan and Charles Dickens  (Claire Tomalin)

The season of domestic goodwill and festivity must have posed a problem to all good Victorian family men with more than one family to take care of, particularly when there were two lots of children to receive the demonstrations of paternal love.

Tomalin’s literary biography of Charles Dickens reveals the writer’s extramarital relationship with a woman named Nelly Ternan. Tomalin presents the complications that resulted for Dickens from this relationship in terms of his personal and family life as well as his professional writing and literary work. Revealing information such as an extramarital relationship can influence the way a reader may feel about the subject as a person, and in the case of literary biography it can influence the way readers feel about the subject’s literature as well. Artists and writers who are beloved , such as Charles Dickens, are often idealized by their devoted readers and society itself. However, as Tomalin’s biography of Dickens indicates, artists and writers are complicated and as subject to human failings as anyone else.

Example 3:  Virginia Woolf  (Hermione Lee)

‘A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living’: so too with the biography of that self. And just as lives don’t stay still, so life-writing can’t be fixed and finalised. Our ideas are shifting about what can be said, our knowledge of human character is changing. The biographer has to pioneer, going ‘ahead of the rest of us, like the miner’s canary, testing the atmosphere , detecting falsity, unreality, and the presence of obsolete conventions’. So, ‘There are some stories which have to be retold by each generation’. She is talking about the story of Shelley, but she could be talking about her own life-story.

In this passage, Lee is able to demonstrate what her biographical subject, Virginia Woolf, felt about biography and a person telling their own or another person’s story. Literary biographies of well-known writers can be especially difficult to navigate in that both the author and biographical subject are writers, but completely separate and different people. As referenced in this passage by Lee, Woolf was aware of the subtleties and fluidity present in a person’s life which can be difficult to judiciously and effectively relay to a reader on the part of a biographer. In addition, Woolf offers insight into the fact that biographers must make choices in terms of what information is presented to the reader and the context in which it is offered, making them a “miner’s canary” as to how history will view and remember the biographical subject.

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KateChopin.org

The kate chopin international society, american author kate chopin (1850–1904) wrote two published novels and about a hundred short stories in the 1890s. most of her fiction is set in louisiana and most of her best-known work focuses on the lives of sensitive, intelligent women..

By the Editors of KateChopin.org

Kate Chopin’s short stories were well received in her own time and were published by some of America’s most prestigious magazines— Vogue , the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s Young People , Youth’s Companion , and the Century . A few stories were syndicated by the American Press Association. Her stories appeared also in her two published collections, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), both of which received good reviews from critics across the country. Twenty-six of her stories are children’s stories —those published in or submitted to children’s magazines or those similar in subject or theme to those that were. By the late 1890s Kate Chopin was well known among American readers of magazine fiction.

Her early novel At Fault (1890) had not been much noticed by the public, but The Awakening (1899) was widely condemned. Critics called it morbid, vulgar, and disagreeable. Willa Cather, who would become a well known twentieth-century American author, labeled it trite and sordid.

Some modern scholars have written that the novel was banned at Chopin’s hometown library in St. Louis, but this claim has not been able to be verified, although in 1902, the Evanston, Illinois, Public Library removed The Awakening from its open shelves—and the book The Awakening " href="https://www.katechopin.org/the-awakening/#banned"> has been challenged twice in recent years. Chopin’s third collection of stories, to have been called A Vocation and a Voice , was for unknown reasons cancelled by the publisher and did not appear as a separate volume until 1991.

Chopin’s novels were mostly forgotten after her death in 1904, but several of her short stories appeared in an anthology within five years after her death, others were reprinted over the years, and slowly people again came to read her. In the 1930s a Chopin biography appeared which spoke well of her short fiction but dismissed The Awakening as unfortunate. However, by the 1950s scholars and others recognized that the novel is an insightful and moving work of fiction. Such readers set in motion a Kate Chopin revival, one of the more remarkable literary revivals in the United States.

After 1969, when Per Seyersted’s biography , one sympathetic to The Awakening , was published, along with Seyersted’s edition of her complete works, Kate Chopin became known throughout the world. She has attracted great attention from scholars and students, and her work has been translated into other languages, including Albanian, Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Persian (Farsi), Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and Vietnamese. (If you know of a translation into another language, would you write to us ?) She is today understood as a classic writer who speaks eloquently to contemporary concerns. The Awakening , “The Storm,” “The Story of an Hour,” “Désirée’s Baby,” “A Pair of Silk Stockings,” “A Respectable Woman,” “ Athénaïse ,” and other stories appear in countless editions and are embraced by people for their sensitive, graceful, poetic depictions of women’s lives.

Kate Chopin’s childhood Kate Chopin’s marriage; her life in Louisiana Kate Chopin’s writing career; her life in St. Louis Kate Chopin’s death; assessments of her work Published biographies of Kate Chopin Questions and Answers

Kate Chopin’s childhood

Catherine (Kate) O’Flaherty was born in St. Louis, Missouri, USA, on  February 8, 1850 , the second child of Thomas O’Flaherty of County Galway, Ireland, and Eliza Faris of St. Louis. Kate’s family on her mother’s side was of French extraction, and Kate grew up speaking both French and English. She was bilingual and bicultural–feeling at home in different communities with quite different values–and the influence of French life and literature on her thinking is noticeable throughout her fiction.

From 1855 to 1868 Kate attended the St. Louis Academy of the Sacred Heart, with one year at the Academy of the Visitation. As a girl, she was mentored by woman–by her mother, her grandmother, and her great grandmother, as well as by the Sacred Heart nuns. Kate formed deep bonds with her family members, with the sisters who taught her at school, and with her life-long friend Kitty Garasché. Much of the fiction Kate wrote as an adult draws on the nurturing she received from women as she was growing up.

Her early life had a great deal of trauma. In 1855, her father was killed in a railroad accident. In 1863 her beloved French-speaking great grandmother died. Kate spent the Civil War in St. Louis, a city where residents supported both the Union and the Confederacy and where her family had slaves in the house. Her half brother enlisted in the Confederate army, was captured by Union forces, and died of typhoid fever.

From 1867 to 1870 Kate kept a commonplace book in which she recorded diary entries and copied passages of essays, poems, and other writings. In 1869 she wrote a little sketch, “Emancipation: A Life Fable.”

Kate Chopin’s marriage; her life in Louisiana

On their wedding trip the couple traveled to Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and New York, and then crossed the Atlantic and landed in Bremen, Germany. Dr. Heidi M. Podlasli-Labrenz, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bremen, recently took pictures, she tells us, “of the place that Kate Chopin visited on July 8, 1870: ‘Ten miles out in the country’ . . . to visit the residence of a Mr Knoop, the wealthiest merchant of Bremen.'” Podlasli-Labrenz says that from the picture she took of Baron Knoop’s statue “you will get an idea of the kind of man he was supposed to have been: very polite, generous, and good-natured.”

The Chopins toured Germany, Switzerland, and France. They saw Paris only briefly, in September, 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War, at a moment when the city was preparing for a long siege. Kate never visited Europe again.

Back in the States, the couple settled in New Orleans, where Oscar established a business as a cotton factor, dealing with cotton and other commodities (corn, sugar, and molasses, among them). Louisiana was in the midst of Reconstruction at the time, and the city was beset with economic and racial troubles. Oscar joined the notorious White League, a Democratic group that in 1874 had a violent confrontation with Republican Radicals, causing President Grant to send in federal troops.

But New Orleans also offered superb music at the French Opera House, along with fine theatre, horse races, and, of course, Mardi Gras. Kate may have met the French painter Edgar Degas, who lived in New Orleans for several months around 1872. She would have been observing life in the city, gathering material that she could draw upon for her fiction later in life.

The Chopins lived in three New Orleans houses. The last one, pictured here, is at 1413 Louisiana Avenue (The photo by Judy Cooper appears in Thomas Bonner, Jr’s Kate Chopin Companion ):

Like other wealthy families in the city, the Chopins would go by boat to vacation on Grand Isle, a Creole resort in the Gulf of Mexico.

Between 1871 and 1879 Kate gave birth to five sons and a daughter–in order of birth, Jean Baptiste, Oscar Charles, George Francis, Frederick, Felix Andrew, and Lélia (baptized Marie Laïza).

In 1879 the Chopins moved to Cloutierville, a small French village in Natchitoches Parish, in northwestern Louisiana, after Oscar closed his New Orleans business because of hard financial times.  The house, later called the Bayou Folk Museum/Kate Chopin House, burned in 2008. (Photo by Jean Carter, courtesy Cane River National Heritage Area. )

Kate Chopin’s writing career; her life in St. Louis

Oscar bought a general store in Cloutierville, but in 1882 he died of malaria–and Kate became a widow at age thirty-two, with the responsibility of raising six children. She never remarried.

In 1883 and 1884, Chopin’s recent biographer, Emily Toth, has written, Kate had an affair with a local planter. But she then moved with her family back to St. Louis where she found better schools for her children and a richer cultural life for herself. Shortly after, in 1885, her mother died. Kate Chopin’s home was at 4232 McPherson Avenue in St Louis; it is still lived in today.

As a mature adult, Barbara Ewell writes, Kate “was a remarkable, charming person. Not very tall, inclined to be plump, and quite pretty, she had thick, wavy brown hair that grayed prematurely, and direct, sparking brown eyes. Her friends remembered most her quiet manner and quick Irish wit, embellished with a gift for mimicry. A gracious, easygoing hostess, she enjoyed laughter, music, and dancing, but especially intellectual talk, and she could express her own considered opinions with surprising directness.”

Chopin completed a second novel, to have been called Young Dr. Gosse and Théo , but her attempt to find a publisher failed and she later destroyed the manuscript. She became active in St. Louis literary and cultural circles, discussing the works of many writers, including Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Émile Zola, and George Sand (she had called her daughter Lélia, apparently after the title of Sand’s 1833 novel).

During the next decade, although maintaining an active social life, she plunged into her work and kept accurate records of when she wrote her hundred or so short stories, which magazines she submitted them to, when they were accepted (or rejected) and published, and how much she was paid for them.

In 1889 she wrote “A Point at Issue!” and in 1891 rewrote “A No-Account Creole” (which she had originally written in 1888) and wrote the children’s story “Beyond the Bayou” and other stories. Five of her stories appeared in regional and national magazines, including Youth’s Companion and Harper’s Young People .

She wrote “Désirée’s Baby” and the little sketch “Ripe Figs” in 1892. “At the ‘Cadian Ball” appeared in Two Tales that year, and eight of her other stories were published. The next year she wrote “Madame Célestin’s Divorce,” and thirteen of her stories were published. Chopin traveled to New York and Boston to seek a publisher for a novel and a collection of stories.

In 1894 she wrote “Lilacs” and “Her Letters.” “The Story of an Hour” and “A Respectable Woman” appeared in Vogue . And Houghton Mifflin published Bayou Folk , a collection of twenty-three of Chopin’s stories.

Bayou Folk was a success. Chopin wrote that she had seen a hundred press notices about it. The collection was written up in the New York Times and the Atlantic , among other places, and most reviewers found its stories pleasant and charming. They liked its use of local dialects.

Chopin traveled that year to a conference of the Western Association of Writers in Indiana and published in Critic an essay about her experience, an essay that offers a rare insight into what she thinks about writers and writing. “Among these people,” she says, “are to be found an earnestness in the acquirement and dissemination of book-learning, a clinging to the past and conventional standards, an almost Creolean sensitiveness to criticism and a singular ignorance of, or disregard for, the value of the highest art forms.”

“There is,” she continues, “a very, very big world lying not wholly in northern Indiana, nor does it lie at the antipodes, either. It is human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the veil with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it.”

Also in 1894 Chopin published in St. Louis Life a review of Lourdes by the French writer Émile Zola. She did not much like the book, but the way she begins her review is illuminating:

“I once heard a devotee of impressionism admit, in looking at a picture by Monet, that, while he himself had never seen in nature the peculiar yellows and reds therein depicted, he was convinced that Monet had painted them because he saw them and because they were true. With something of a kindred faith in the sincerity of Mons. Zola’s work, I am yet not at all times ready to admit its truth, which is only equivalent to saying that our points of view differ, that truth rests upon a shifting basis and is apt to be kaleidoscopic.”

Her 1894 comment about the importance of describing “human existence in its subtle, complex, true meaning, stripped of the veil with which ethical and conventional standards have draped it” and her conviction that “truth rests upon a shifting basis and is apt to be kaleidoscopic” are helpful points of reference in approaching Kate Chopin’s work.

Like Bayou Folk , her earlier collection, A Night in Acadie was praised by the critics. One reviewer called it “a string of little jewels,” and a modern critic considers it one of America’s great nineteenth-century books of short stories.

Chopin’s grandmother, Athénaïse Charleville Faris, died in 1897. Chopin worked on The Awakening that year, finishing the novel in 1898. She also wrote her short story “The Storm” in 1898, but, apparently because of its sexual content, she did not send it out to publishers. Probably no mainstream American publisher would have printed the story.

The next year, 1899, one of her stories appeared in the Saturday Evening Post , and Herbert S. Stone published The Awakening .

A few critics praised the novel’s artistry, but most were very negative, calling the book “morbid,” “unpleasant,” “unhealthy,” “sordid,” “poison.” You can read about the reviewers in the Chopin biographies listed below, in Margo Culley’s Norton Critical Edition of the novel, and in Janet Beer’s  Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin , among other places. For details, scroll down on The Awakening page of this site.

It took decades before critics fully grasped what Chopin had accomplished. In 1969 Norwegian critic Per Seyersted finally did her justice. Kate Chopin, he wrote, “broke new ground in American literature. She was the first woman writer in her country to accept passion as a legitimate subject for serious, outspoken fiction. Revolting against tradition and authority; with a daring which we can hardy fathom today; with an uncompromising honesty and no trace of sensationalism, she undertook to give the unsparing truth about woman’s submerged life. She was something of a pioneer in the amoral treatment of sexuality, of divorce, and of woman’s urge for an existential authenticity. She is in many respects a modern writer, particularly in her awareness of the complexities of truth and the complications of freedom.”

Two of Chopin’s stories were published in Vogue in 1900. You can find out  when Kate Chopin wrote each of her short stories and when and where each was first published.

Herbert S. Stone, for unknown reasons, canceled her contract for A Vocation and a Voice , a third collection of her stories (the collection was published by Penguin Classics in 1991). In 1902 “A Vocation and a Voice,” the title story of Chopin’s proposed volume, was published in the St. Louis Mirror .

Kate Chopin’s death; assessments of her work

In 1904 Kate Chopin bought a season ticket for the famous St. Louis World’s Fair, which was located not far from her home. It had been hot in the city all that summer, and Saturday, August 20, was especially hot, so when Chopin returned home from the fair, she was very tired. She called her son at midnight complaining of a pain in her head. Doctors thought that she had had a cerebral hemorrhage.

She lapsed into unconsciousness the next day and died on August 22. She is buried in Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, where many people visit her gravesite and sometimes leave behind tokens of their affection.

Her last published story appeared in Youth’s Companion  on March 30, 1905. You can read  “Her First Party” as it looked when it appeared .

Fifty years later, critics began to understand the essence of her work. Kenneth Eble published an article about her in 1956, and, in his introduction to a paperback edition of The Awakening in 1964, he speaks of Chopin’s “underground imagination”–“the imaginative life which seems to have gone on from early childhood somewhat beneath and apart from her well-regulated actual existence.”

George Arms a few years later writes that in her work Kate Chopin “presents a series of events in which the truth is present, but with a philosophical pragmatism she is unwilling to extract a final truth. Rather, she sees truth as constantly re-forming itself and as so much a part of the context of what happens that it can never be final or for that matter abstractly stated.”

And in his 1969 biography, Per Seyersted famously described how Chopin “broke new ground in American literature.”

Since 1969, countless scholars have written about Chopin’s life and work. Feminist critics have had an enormous influence. Most of what has been written about Kate Chopin since 1969 is feminist in nature or is focused on women’s positions in society. Sandra Gilbert’s introduction to the Penguin Classics Edition of The Awakening , for example, and Margo Culley’s selection of essays for the Norton Critical Edition of the novel are familiar to a generation of readers, although scholars have also been dealing with other subjects and themes . Lists of critical works appear at the bottom of those pages on this site devoted to Chopin’s two novels and her most popular short stories.

Today Kate Chopin is widely accepted as one of America’s essential authors.

Her novels and stories are available in countless books and online. Critics and scholars in many countries have discussed her work in over 400 journal articles as well as in at least 60 books and 160 PhD dissertations . Artists have created plays, films, songs, operas, dances, screenplays, graphic fiction, and other art forms based on her work.

The Central West End Association of the city of St. Louis, Missouri, in 2012 dedicated a bust of Kate Chopin at the Writers’ Corner in the city.

Published biographies of Kate Chopin:

The most recent–and today by far the most influential–biography of Kate Chopin is Emily Toth’s Unveiling Kate Chopin (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999). Emily Toth earlier published a longer biography, Kate Chopin (New York: Morrow, 1990).

An important biography is the one referred to above, Per Seyersted’s Kate Chopin: A Critical Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969).

Also important is Daniel Rankin’s Kate Chopin and Her Creole Stories (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1932; available now through Google Books). In spite of his impaired critical judgment (he considered The Awakening an unfortunate mistake), Rankin had, as Bernard Koloski explains in the recent Cambridge Companion to Kate Chopin , “what no other Chopin scholar would ever have again: access to Kate Chopin’s children, relatives, friends, and at least one of her publishers.”

Biographical questions and answers:

Q: I associate the name “Chopin” with piano music, not fiction. Did Kate Chopin write any music?

A: Yes, before she started writing fiction, she wrote a polka called the “Lilia Polka.” It was published by H. Rollman & Sons in 1888.

You can hear the polka played on a piano.

Q: Does Kate Chopin have any descendants living today?

A: Yes, she has many. You can read about some of them on our page  Kate Chopin’s Family Today .

Q: I’m reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and I’ve just met Simon Legree. I’ve read somewhere that Simon Legree was modeled after the father of Oscar Chopin, Kate Chopin’s husband. Do you know if this is true or just rumor?

A: Here is what Emily Toth says in her 1990 biography of Kate Chopin: “Local folklore confused [Dr. Chopin, Oscar Chopin’s father] with Robert McAlpin, who had owned the land before him and who was sometimes said to be the model for Simon Legree in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

So the connection between Oscar Chopin’s father and Simon Legree is rumor, not fact.

You may want to read Chopin’s early novel, At Fault . It includes a chapter in which two characters visit Robert McAlpin’s grave.

Q: Can anyone help with the identity of Mrs. F. M. Estere of 4434 Laclede Avenue of St. Louis and her possible connection with Kate Chopin?

A: We’ve recently received a response to this question. Many thanks to Ms. Clark:

I am a genealogist and was intrigued by the question. Here is what I was able to find out in just a couple of hours of Internet research…..

I believe the woman is Mrs. F. M. Estes (Francis “Frank” Marion Estes). He was a lawyer who practiced at that address. This was his second wife. They married in 1896 in St. Louis. Her name was Nellie Hancock Stockton (1870-1943) She was born in Texas. They had one son, Stockton. Frank died in 1909. He had many investments so his wife never wanted for money after his death. She actually left the country in 1910 and went to Buenos Aires until about 1912. She moved to New York after that. She left the country again in 1918 and returned in 1921. Her son was traveling with her at this time as he is listed on the ship’s manifest. Frank had two children from his first marriage, Francis M. Jr, and Grace.

Kate’s house on Morgan Street was several blocks away from the Estes home on Laclede Ave. Her home on McPhearson was much closer. It is possible they were in the same social circles. Frank was a well-known lawyer and was the council on several important St. Louis cases. It is possible he represented Kate at some time.

I hope this information sheds some light on Kate’s friends.

Pamela Clark

New Q: Hello from Galway, Ireland. I wonder what amount of detail is known about Kate Chopin’s father Thomas O’Flaherty’s birthplace, and about his wife’s birthplace  — the townlands in which they were born, and their own parents’ details?

A: Several Chopin scholars agree that your best beginning point for understanding more about Kate Chopin’s father is in the book  Unveiling Kate Chopin ,  the 1999 biography by Emily Toth.  You should be able to find a copy of this book through any good library or bookstore.

Emily Toth writes: “I don’t know if anyone’s checked Irish baptismal records for Thomas O’Flaherty family. Churches in Ireland do keep records forever, so you might be able to find names of siblings and godparents. I remember wondering long ago if there were Protestant connections, since he was allegedly well educated at a time when most Catholics (such as my Irish ancestors) were illiterate. It would be great if there’s any more information.”

Tom Bonner adds: “I had a friend who was having difficulty locating a line of ancestry in Ireland. Finally, he contacted the embassy for Ireland in Washington, and the person who was assigned to his query provided resources and directions that expedited his search. I think that knowing more about Chopin’s father would, indeed, be helpful.”

And Bonnie Shaker writes that “based on papers for  the Ireland conference  panel on Irishness in Kate Chopin’s fiction, the best starting points are still Emily Toth’s biographies.”

How to Write a Biography: A Step-by-Step Guide

By Hannah Yang

Table of Contents

What is a biography, a step-by-step guide to writing a biography, tips for how to write a great biography, conclusion on how to write a biography.

Writing a biography can be a rewarding endeavor, but it can also feel a bit daunting if you’ve never written one before.

Whether you’re capturing the life story of a famous person, a family member, or even yourself, creating a compelling biography involves a mix of thorough research, narrative skill, and a personal touch.

So, how exactly do you write a successful biography? 

In this guide, we’ll break down the essentials to help you craft a biography that’s both informative and engaging, as well as our top tips for how to make it truly shine.

A biography is a detailed account of someone’s life.

A well-written biography needs to be objective and accurate. At the same time, it needs to depict more than just the basic facts like birth, education, work, relationships, and death—it should also portray the subject’s personal experience of those events.

So, in addition to being a good researcher, a good biographer also needs to be a good storyteller. You should provide insights into the subject’s personality, motivations, and impact on the world around them.

What’s the Difference Between a Biography, a Memoir, and an Autobiography?

Understanding the distinctions between different genres of life writing is crucial for both writers and readers. Here’s a quick breakdown of the key differences between a biography and other related genres.

Biography: a detailed account of a person’s life, usually written in the third-person POV and supported by extensive research 

Autobiography: a self-written account of the author’s own life, usually written in the first person POV and following a chronological order 

Memoir: a collection of memories that an individual writes about moments or events that took place in their life, usually in the first person POV and in an introspective and personal way

Narrative nonfiction: a book that tells true stories using the techniques of fiction writing, such as character development, narrative arc, and detailed settings

Best Biography Examples to Study

The best way to learn how to write well is to read other successful books within the genre you’re writing. 

Here are five great biographies to add to your reading list. For a longer list, check out our article on the 20 best biographies to read . 

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand: the incredible true story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympian and World War II hero.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson: a comprehensive and engaging account of the Apple co-founder’s life.

Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow: the biography that inspired the hit musical, providing a deep dive into Hamilton ’ s life and legacy.

Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford: a nuanced story that uncovers the family connection between the three Millay sisters and their mother.

Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston: the story of Cudjo Lewis, one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade.

As with writing any book, writing a biography is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s easier to think of it as a series of smaller steps than as one big challenge to tackle. 

Let’s break down the process step by step.

1. Choose Your Subject

Decide who you want to write about. It could be a well-known celebrity, a historical figure, or someone close to you.

In addition to figuring out who you’re writing about, this is also the step where you figure out why you want to write about them. Why is this a story worth telling, and what makes you interested in it? 

Maybe the subject of your biography overcame major hardships in life to achieve success, and that story will inspire others facing similar struggles. Or maybe they made a really unique contribution to the world that not enough people know about, and you want to shine a bigger spotlight on that impact.

Knowing why you’re telling this story will help you make the right decisions about how to research, outline, draft, and edit your biography.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience is a crucial step in writing a good biography. You should tailor your biography to the interests and knowledge level of your audience.

A biography for a general audience will differ from one written for experts in a particular field. For example, two biographies about Emily Dickinson would be vastly different if one is written for young children and the other is written for adult poets. 

3. Conduct Research

Dive deep into your research. Use a variety of sources to get a well-rounded view of your subject’s life. Take detailed notes and organize your findings.

Gather as much information as you can about your subject. This includes primary sources like interviews, letters, and diaries, as well as secondary sources such as books, articles, and documentaries.

Here are some primary sources to look for: 

Letters and diaries: These provide intimate insights into the subject’s thoughts, feelings, and daily life, and can often be found in family archives, libraries, and historical societies.

Birth, marriage, and death certificates: These documents can provide crucial dates and familial relationships.

Census data: Census records can provide demographic information and track changes over time.

Property records: These can reveal where the subject lived and owned property.

Employment and school records: These records offer formalized insights into the subject’s education and career.

Military records: If applicable, military records can provide information on service, ranks, and honors.

Photos and videos: Look for photographs and videos in public libraries, historical societies, online databases like the Library of Congress, and family photo albums.

Historical newspapers: Access archives of local and national newspapers for articles, interviews, and obituaries related to the subject.

Digital archives: Use online resources like ProQuest, Chronicling America, and newspaper databases available through public libraries.

You can also look for secondary sources, which provide more context and perspective, such as:

Existing biographies: Search for existing biographies and books about the subject or their era. How does your project stand out from the crowd? 

Academic articles and papers: Access journals through university libraries, which often have extensive collections of scholarly articles.

Documentaries and biographical films: You can often find these on streaming services or public television archives.

Websites and blogs: Look for reputable websites and blogs dedicated to the subject or related fields.

Social media platforms: The things people say on social media can offer insights into public perception about your subject.

Finally, you can also conduct your own interviews. Talk to the subject if they’re still alive, as well as their friends, family, and colleagues. You can ask them for personal anecdotes to add more color to your book, or more information to fill in any gaps in your knowledge. 

4. Ask Engaging Questions

Great biographers start from a place of curiosity. Before you start writing, you should know the answers to the following questions: 

What makes your subject’s story worth telling?

What was your subject’s childhood like? 

What were your subject’s early interests and hobbies?

What level of education did your subject achieve and where did they study?

What was your subject’s personality like?

What were their beliefs and values? 

How did your subject’s personality and beliefs change over time?

What were the major turning points in your subject’s life? 

How was your subject affected by the major political, cultural, and societal events that occurred throughout their life?  

What did their career path look like?

What were their major accomplishments? 

What were their major failures? 

How did they contribute to their field, their country, or their community?

Were they involved in any major controversies or scandals?

Who were the most important people in the subject’s life, such as friends, partners, or mentors?

If the subject is no longer living, how did they pass away?

What lasting impact did the subject leave behind? 

5. Create an Outline

An outline helps you structure your biography. You can write an extensive outline that includes every scene you need to write, or you can keep it simple and just make a list of high-level bullet points—whatever works best for your writing process. 

The best structure to use will depend on the shape of the story you’re trying to tell. Think about what your subject’s life looked like and what core messages you’re trying to leave the reader with.

If you want to keep things simple, you can simply go in chronological order. Tell the story from the birth of your subject to the death of your subject, or to the present day if this person is still living. 

You can also use a more thematically organized structure, similar to what you would find on a Wikipedia page. You could break your book down into sections such as major life events, personal relationships, core accomplishments, challenges, and legacy.

Or, if you want to be more creative, you can use a nonlinear story structure, jumping between recent events and older flashbacks based on which events feel thematically tied together. 

6. Write Your First Draft 

Now that you have an outline, it’s time to sit down and write your first draft.

Your opening chapters should hook the reader and give a preview of what’s to come. Highlight a compelling aspect of the subject’s life to draw readers in.

In your middle chapters, cover all the key events you need to include about your subject’s life and weave in themes and anecdotes that reveal their personality and impact.

In your final chapters, wrap up your biography by summarizing the subject’s legacy and reflecting on their overall significance. This provides closure and leaves the reader with a lasting impression.

Remember that it’s okay if your first draft isn’t perfect. Your goal is simply to get words down on the page so you have something to edit. 

7. Make Developmental Revisions

Now that you’re done with your first draft, it’s time to make big-picture revisions.

Review your biography for coherence and organization. Does the overall structure make sense? Are there any arcs or themes that aren’t given enough attention? Are there scenes or chapters that don’t need to be included? 

8. Make Line Edits

Once you’ve completed your developmental edits, it’s time to make smaller line edits. This is your time to edit for grammar, punctuation, and style.

Make sure you keep a consistent voice throughout the book. Some biographies feel more conversational and humorous, while others are serious and sophisticated. 

To get through your editing faster, you can run your manuscript through ProWritingAid , which will automatically catch errors, point out stylistic inconsistencies, and help you rephrase confusing sentences. 

Don’t be afraid to ask others for feedback. No good book is written in a vacuum, and you can ask critique partners and beta readers to help you improve your work.

What makes a great biography stand out from the rest? Here are our best tips for how to take your manuscript to the next level.

Tip 1: Focus on Key Themes

Identify the central themes or patterns in the subject’s life—the ones that will really make readers keep thinking about your book. These could be related to the subject’s struggles, achievements, relationships, or values.

Tip 2: Balance Facts and Narrative

A good biography should read like a story, not a list of facts.

Use narrative techniques like imagery, character development, and dialogue to create a compelling and coherent story.

Tip 3: Add Your Own Perspective

Biographies need to be objective, but that doesn’t mean the author has to be entirely invisible. Including your own perspective can make the biography relatable and engaging. 

Letting your voice shine can help illustrate the subject ’ s character and bring their story to life. It will also help make your biography stand out from the crowd. 

Tip 4: Create a Timeline

Organize the key events of the subject’s life in chronological order. This will help you see the bigger picture and ensure you cover all important aspects.

Tip 5: Be Considerate

Because biographies are about real people, you should be mindful of who will be impacted by the story you’re telling, especially if your subject is still alive or still has living family members.

If the subject is still alive, ask them for permission to tell their story before you start writing. This also helps ensure that you don’t get sued. 

Writing a biography is a journey of discovery, not just about the subject, but also about the craft of storytelling.

By combining thorough research, a clear structure, and engaging narrative techniques, you can create a biography that not only informs but also inspires and captivates your readers. 

Don’t forget to run your manuscript through ProWritingAid so you can make sure your prose is as polished as possible. 

Now, pick your subject, gather your resources, and start writing—there’s a fascinating story waiting to be told.

Good luck, and happy writing!

Write like a bestselling author

Love writing? ProWritingAid will help you improve the style, strength, and clarity of your stories.

Hannah Yang

Hannah Yang is a speculative fiction writer who writes about all things strange and surreal. Her work has appeared in Analog Science Fiction, Apex Magazine, The Dark, and elsewhere, and two of her stories have been finalists for the Locus Award. Her favorite hobbies include watercolor painting, playing guitar, and rock climbing. You can follow her work on hannahyang.com, or subscribe to her newsletter for publication updates.

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Alice Munro

Canadian author Alice Munro was a critically acclaimed short-story writer who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Who Was Alice Munro?

Quick facts, early life of an aspiring author, books and short stories: away from her and runaway, 2013 nobel prize in literature, personal life and later years.

Canadian writer Alice Munro was a master of the short story and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013. Growing up in the 1930s and ’40s in rural Ontario, Munro aspired to become a writer and was determined to do so even after having to drop out of college because she couldn’t afford it. Her first book of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades , was published in 1968 when she was 37. Acclaim arrived in spectacular fashion and continued throughout her career as she won the top Canadian book award, the 2009 Man Booker International Prize, and the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature. Munro died at age 92 in May 2024.

FULL NAME: Alice Ann Munro BORN: July 10, 1931 DIED: May 13, 2024 BIRTHPLACE: Wingham, Canada SPOUSES: James Munro (1951-1973) and Gerald Fremlin (1976-2013) CHILDREN: Sheila, Catherine, Jenny, and Andrea ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer

Alice Munro was born Alice Ann Laidlaw on July 10, 1931, in Wingham, Canada, a town in the province of Ontario. Her father, Robert, had a fox and mink farm at their rural home for a time. Her mother, Anne, was a teacher. Alice was raised with two younger sisters.

When Anne developed Parkinson’s disease, 12-year-old Alice became de facto head of the household. Still, she found time to read and, by age 14, dream of becoming an author. She won a two-year scholarship to University of Western Ontario, where she studied journalism then English. Unable to afford tuition once her scholarship money ran out, she dropped out in 1951.

That same year, Alice married James Munro, a fellow student at University of Western Ontario, and the couple moved to Vancouver. There, they began growing their family. Sheila, Catherine, and Jenny were born during this time, though Catherine died shortly after birth. Child-rearing offered Alice little time to write, but that ultimately led her to master what became her signature form: short stories.

After moving to Victoria, Canada, in British Columbia, Alice and James opened a bookstore called Munro’s. There, they had another daughter, Andrea. Also during this time, Alice began publishing her work in various magazines.

Munro’s first collection of stories—and first book-length work—was published in 1968 when she was 37. The collection, titled Dance of the Happy Shades , achieved great success in Munro’s native country, and the author received her first Governor General’s Award for fiction. Three years later, she published Lives of Girls and Women , a collection of stories that critics deemed a Bildungsroman, a work centering on the main character’s moral and psychological development.

Primarily known for her short stories about life in western Ontario, Munro published several collections across many decades, including Who Do You Think You Are ? (1978); The Moons of Jupiter (1982); Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001), which was later adapted into the movie Away from Her , directed by Sarah Polley and released in 2006; Runaway (2004); and The View from Castle Rock (2006).

Munro received her second Governor General’s Award exactly three decades after her first, in 1998, for The Progress of Love . In 2005, Time magazine named Munro a TIME 100 Honoree. “Alice Munro is 73 now, and she deserves the Nobel Prize,” Time wrote. “Her fiction admits readers to a more intimate knowledge and respect for what they already possess.”

In 2009, Munro won the Man Booker International Prize, honoring her lifetime body of work. That same year, she published the short-story collection Too Much Happiness .

Munro published 13 short-story collections by her 80 th birthday. The year 2012 brought Dear Life— her final story collection, according to the writer, who announced that she was retiring from writing in June 2013.

In October 2013, at age 82, Munro was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature, with the Swedish Academy lauding her as the “master of the contemporary short story.” Munro was the first Canadian woman to receive this particular prize, the first woman to win the literature prize since Herta Mueller in 2009, and only the 13 th female recipient of the literature prize since it was founded in 1901. Before Munro, the most recent Canadian writer to have won the honor was Saul Bellow in 1976.

“It’s nice to go out with a bang,” Munro stated after receiving a Canadian book award for Dear Life . When she was contacted by The Canadian Press about her Nobel Prize win, Munro remarked, “I knew I was in the running, yes, but I never thought I would win.” The author later stated, “I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something that you played around with until you’d got a novel written.”

After divorcing her first husband, James Munro in 1973, Alice moved back to Ontario.

She got remarried in 1976 to a geographer named Gerald Fremlin. For many years, the couple lived in Fremlin’s hometown of Clinton. He died in April 2013.

In the twilight of her life, Munro dealt with a variety of health issues. She had heart surgery in 2001 and was also treated for cancer. The author died on May 13, 2024, at age 92 in Port Hope, Ontario.

• I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something that you played around with until you’d got a novel written.
• It’s nice to go out with a bang.
• Nobody here cares much about writing. It allows me to feel quite free.
• Fiction is serious business. You really have to think these characters through. You have to think about how people really live their lives and the compromises they make.

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