The Floating Press / Biography & autobiography

The Story of My Life

by Helen Keller

Helen Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life, tells of her early life and of her experiences with Annie Sullivan, her teacher and companion. It was first published in 1903. Keller was the first deaf-blind...

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

by Benjamin Franklin

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, which Franklin himself called his Memoirs, is the unfinished record of his life written between 1771 and 1790. It has become one of the most well-known and influential...

The History of Napoleon Buonaparte

by John Gibson Lockhart

"Nations yet to come will look back upon his history as to some grand and supernatural romance. The fiery energy of his youthful career, and the magnificent progress of his irresistible ambition, have invested...

Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie

by Andrew Carnegie

The industrialist, businessman, and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835 - 1919) established a gospel of wealth that can be neither ignored nor forgotten, and set a pace in distribution that succeeding millionaires...

In the South Seas

by Robert Louis Stevenson

In the South Seas is a collection of Robert Louis Stevenson's articles and essays on his travels in the Pacific. In his words: "For nearly ten years my health had been declining; and for some while before I...

Stories of Inventors

by Russell Doubleday

There are many thrilling incidents - all the more attractive because of their truth - in the study, the trials, the disappointments, the obstacles overcome, and the final triumph of the successful inventor.

Every...

Beethoven

by Richard Wagner

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 - 1827) is one of the most famous and influential classical musicians of all time. He was particularly instrumental in the transition from the Classic to the Romantic. He was born...

The True Story of My Life

by Hans Christian Andersen

From the translator:

No literary labor is more delightful to me than translating the beautiful thoughts and fancies of Hans Christian Andersen. My heart is in the work, and I feel as if my spirit were kindred...

Autobiography of Goethe

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In the work of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832) one can find the seed of most German thought, literature, science and theology. A hugely influential man, not only on Germany but on the rest of Europe,...

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

by Thomas De Quincey

I have often been asked how I first came to be a regular opium-eater, and have suffered, very unjustly, in the opinion of my acquaintance from being reputed to have brought upon myself all the sufferings which...

A Personal Record

by Joseph Conrad

A Personal Record is writer Joseph Conrad's autobiography. The writing is lyrical and atmospheric and commonly believed to be somewhat embellished. It does, however, give great insight into his Polish childhood,...

The Education of Henry Adams

by Henry Adams

The Education of Henry Adams is the autobiography of the Bostonian Henry Adams. As he approached his seventieth birthday when "the mind wakes to find itself looking blankly into the void of death," Adams wrote...

The Americanization of Edward Bok

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography 1921

by Edward William Bok

The Americanization of Edward Bok is an autobiography, told in the third person, that shares the life of a little Dutch boy unceremoniously set down in America unable to make himself understood or even to know...

Indian Boyhood

by Charles A. Eastman

Charles Eastman, whose Sioux name was Ohiyesa (pronounced Oh hee' yay suh), was a Native American author, doctor and reformer who also helped to establish the Boy Scouts of America. His autobiographical Indian...

Autobiography of John Stuart Mill

by John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873) was a great liberal thinker of the nineteenth century, a noted philosopher, political theorist, and Member of Parliament. Mill was given a disciplined upbringing, his father...