Biography &amp; autobiography

Great Astronomers: William Rowan Hamilton

by Robert Stawell Ball

Sir William Rowan Hamilton (1805–1865) was an Irish physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who made important contributions to mechanics, optics, and algebra. As a teenager, he mastered parts of Newton's...

Free

Download

Twelve Men

by Theodore Dreiser

Character sketches, combining the best of biography with the finest of narrative - short and illustrative.

Free

Download

Sailing Alone Around the World

by Joshua Slocum

Sailing Alone Around the World (1900) is a sailing memoir by Joshua Slocum about his single-handed global circumnavigation aboard the sloop Spray. Slocum was the first person to sail around the world alone....

Free

Download

Adventurers & Ex...

Personal Memoirs

St. Francis of Assisi

by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Chesterton was an orthodox religious person, eventually converting to Roman Catholicism. In 1923, he wrote this short biography of St. Francis of Assisi, after whom Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio chose his papal...

Free

Download

Religious

The Makers of Canada: George Brown

by John Lewis

George Brown (November 29, 1818 – March 9, 1880) was a Scottish-born Canadian journalist, politician Fathers of Confederation. A noted Reform politician, he was also the founder and editor of the Toronto Globe,...

Free

Download

History

Social science

The Confessions

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher...

Free

Download

The Education of Henry Adams

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography 1919

by Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams records the struggle of Bostonian Henry Adams (1838-1918), in early old age, to come to terms with the dawning 20th century, so different from the world of his youth. It is also...

Free

Download

Hawthorne

by Henry James

Free

Download

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

by Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is a memoir and treatise on abolition written by famous orator and ex-slave, Frederick Douglass. It is generally held to be the most famous of a number of narratives...

Free

Download

Great Astronomers: James Bradley

by Robert Stawell Ball

James Bradley (1693–1762) was the English astronomer who served as Astronomer Royal from 1742, succeeding Edmund Halley. He is best known for two fundamental discoveries in astronomy, the aberration of light...

Free

Download

A Personal Record

by Joseph Conrad

Free

Download

Great Astronomers: John Flamsteed

by Robert Stawell Ball

John Flamsteed (1646-1719) was an English astronomer, a contemporary of Isaac Newton, and the first Astronomer Royal in charge of the newly built observatory at Greenwich, England (1676). Although he made no...

Free

Download

Boyhood

by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Free

Download

Apologia Pro Vita Sua

by John Henry Newman

Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Latin: A defence of one's life) is the classic defence of the religious opinions of John Henry Newman, published in 1864 in response to what he saw as an unwarranted attack on himself,...

Free

Download

Religion

Confessions of a Young Man

by George Moore

The Confessions of a Young Man is a memoir by Irish novelist George Moore who spent about 15 years in his teens and 20s in Paris and later London as a struggling artist. The book is notable as being one of the...

Free

Download

Personal Memoirs

Great Astronomers: John Pond

by Agnes Mary Clerke

John Pond (1767–1836) was appointed as 6th Astronomer Royal in February 1811, succeeding Dr. Nevil Maskelyne. Of a mild and unassuming character, Pond neither sought nor attained a popular reputation. His...

Free

Download