List of biographers
Biographers are authors who write an account of another person's life, while autobiographers are authors who write their own biography. Countries of working life: Au = Austria, En = England, Is = Israel, In = India, Nw = Norway, Sc = Scotland, Sw = Sweden, US = United States
Biographers
A–G
- Alfred Ainger – Charles Lamb
- Ellis Amburn – Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, Jack Kerouac, Elizabeth Taylor, Warren Beatty and Janis Joplin
- Núria Añó – Salka Viertel
- Rosemary Ashton – George Eliot
- Deborah Baker – Allen Ginsberg and Laura Riding
- Mark Allen Baker – Battling Nelson and Abe Attell
- James Boswell – Samuel Johnson
- Paula Broadwell – David Petraeus
- Max Brod – Franz Kafka
- Leslie Brody – Jessica Mitford
- Vincent Brome – various writers
- Egerton Brydges – English writers
- Andrea Cagan – Diana Ross
- Thomas Carlyle – John Sterling and Frederick the Great
- Robert A. Caro – Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson
- Humphrey Carpenter – J. R. R. Tolkien, W. H. Auden, Ezra Pound, Evelyn Waugh, Benjamin Britten Robert Runcie and Spike Milligan
- Virginia Spencer Carr – Carson McCullers, Paul Bowles and John Dos Passos
- George Cavendish – Thomas Wolsey
- Nirad C. Chaudhuri – Clive of India and Max Müller
- Ron Chernow
- Na Chokkan – Sachin Tendulkar, Dhirubhai Ambani, Charlie Chaplin, Rahul Dravid, Azim Premji, Lakshmi Mittal, Walt Disney etc. in Tamil
- Vincent Cronin – Napoleon, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and Catherine the Great
- Douglas Day – Malcolm Lowry
- Thomas DiLorenzo – Abraham Lincoln
- Damon DiMarco – Roy Simmons
- Richard Ellmann – James Joyce, Oscar Wilde and William Butler Yeats
- Alberthiene Endah – Chrisye, Krisdayanti and Raam Punjabi
- Ivar Eskeland – decorated with the Order of the Falcon and winner of the Bastian Prize for his biographies of Gisle Straume and Snorri Sturluson
- Wayne Federman – Pete Maravich
- Elaine Feinstein – Marina Tsvetayeva, Pushkin, Ted Hughes
- Kitty Ferguson – Stephen Hawking
- William Fitzstephen – Thomas Becket
- Amanda Foreman – Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
- Antonia Fraser – Mary, Queen of Scots and Oliver Cromwell
- Russell Freedman – Abraham Lincoln
- Douglas Southall Freeman – Robert E. Lee and George Washington
- Leonie Frieda – Catherine de' Medici
- Jean Overton Fuller – Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Algernon Charles Swinburne and Sir Francis Bacon
- Elizabeth Gaskell – Charlotte Brontë
- Peter Gay – Sigmund Freud and Mozart
- Gary Giddins – Bing Crosby, Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong
- Martin Gilbert Winston Churchill
- Josef Greiner – Adolf Hitler
- Adrian Greenwood – Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde
- Peter Guralnick – Elvis Presley and Sam Phillips
H–M
- Seppo Heikinheimo – Aarre Merikanto, Oskar Merikanto and Martti Talvela
- Charles Higham – Errol Flynn, Howard Hughes and Katharine Hepburn
- Thomas Jefferson Hogg – Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Richard Holmes – Mary Shelley, Coleridge, The Age of Wonder
- Michael Holroyd – Lytton Strachey
- Imogen Holst – Gustav Holst
- Walter Isaacson – Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs and Henry Kissinger
- Edward Jablonski – George Gershwin and Irving Berlin
- Elizabeth Jenkins – Jane Austen, Henry Fielding, Lady Caroline Lamb Joseph Lister and Elizabeth I
- Samuel Johnson – Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
- Ernest Jones – Sigmund Freud
- Kathleen Jones – Katherine Mansfield
- Landon Jones – William Clark
- Kitty Kelley – Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Nancy Reagan
- Jacqueline Kent – Kenneth Cook, Beatrice Davis, Julia Gillard and Hephzibah Menuhin
- Marvin Kitman – 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
- Jane Lane – Titus Oates
- Hermione Lee – Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf
- Sidney Lee – Dictionary of National Biography, William Shakespeare and Queen Victoria
- J. Michael Lennon – Norman Mailer
- Santeri Levas – Clara & Robert Schumann, Jean Sibelius
- Barbara Levick – English; specialising in Roman emperors
- Gail Levin – Edward Hopper, Judy Chicago and Lee Krasner
- Roger Lewis – Anthony Burgess
- Kenneth S. Lynn – Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin and Ernest Hemingway
- Brenda Maddox – Elizabeth Taylor, D. H. Lawrence, Nora Joyce, W. B. Yeats and Rosalind Franklin
- Norman Mailer – Marilyn Monroe, Lee Harvey Oswald and Gary Gilmore
- Koryun – Mesrop Mashtots
- William Manchester – Winston Churchill, Douglas MacArthur and John F. Kennedy
- Cristina Marcano – Hugo Chávez
- Bruce Marshall – Wing Commander F. F. E. Yeo-Thomas
- John Matteson – Amos Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott and Margaret Fuller
- André Maurois – 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
- Merle Miller – Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson
- James McGrath Morris – Joseph Pulitzer, Charles Chapin, Ethel Payne, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos
- Miyoshi Kiyotsura – Japanese scholar-statesman
- Ibn al-Qaisarani – medieval Arab biographer of previous medieval biographers
- Simon Sebag-Montefiore – Grigory Potyomkin and Joseph Stalin
- Thomas Moore – Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Lord Byron and Lord Edward Fitzgerald
- Jeffrey Morgan – Alice Cooper and The Stooges
- Ted Morgan – William Burroughs, Somerset Maugham and Franklin Delano Roosevelt
- Andrew Morton – Princess Diana, Monica Lewinsky and Tom Cruise
N–Z
- Ira Nadel – Canada; Leon Uris, David Mamet, Tom Stoppard and Leonard Cohen
- Alanna Nash – United States
- Nakane Kōtei – Japanese writer
- Philip Nel – United States; Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss
- Cornelius Nepos – ancient Rome
- Iris Origo – England and Italy
- James Parton – Horace Greeley, Aaron Burr, Andrew Jackson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Voltaire
- Hesketh Pearson
- F. David Peat – David Bohm
- Plutarch – ancient Greece
- H. F. M. Prescott – Mary I of England
- Arnold Rampersad – Langston Hughes
- Piers Paul Read – Alec Guinness
- W. Andrew Robinson – Satyajit Ray and Rabindranath Tagore
- Romain Rolland – Beethoven, Michelangelo, Leo Tolstoy and Gandhi
- Henry Salt – English authority on Shelley, Richard Jefferies and Henry David Thoreau
- Carl Sandburg – Abraham Lincoln
- Stacy Schiff – United States; Vera Nabokov, Benjamin Franklin, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Cleopatra, The Witches: Salem
- Anton Schindler – Ludwig van Beethoven
- Anne Sebba – Wallis Simpson
- Lee Server – Robert Mitchum and Ava Gardner
- Miranda Seymour – Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace, Hellé Nice, Mary Shelley
- Kirit Shelat – India
- Dawn Langley Simmons – Princess Margaret, Margaret Rutherford and Jacqueline Kennedy
- Roy S. Simmonds – John Steinbeck, William March and Edward O'Brien
- Jean Edward Smith – Ulysses S. Grant, John Marshall and Lucius D. Clay
- Laura J. Snyder – Charles Babbage, John F.W. Herschel, William Whewell, and Richard Jones; Johannes Vermeer and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek; Oliver Sacks
- Dava Sobel – John Harrison, Sister Maria Celeste, daughter of Galileo, Galileo
- Leslie Stephen – Dictionary of National Biography, Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift George Eliot and Thomas Hobbes
- Irving Stone
- Lytton Strachey – eminent Victorians
- Marshall Terrill – many biographies, including Steve McQueen, David Thompson and Pete Maravich
- Nick Tosches – Jerry Lee Lewis, Dean Martin and Sonny Liston
- Meriol Trevor – John Henry Newman, Philip Neri, Pope John XXIII, Thomas Arnold and James II of England
- Henri Troyat – 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
- Alison Weir – Elizabeth I of England, Eleanor of Aquitane, Mary, Queen of Scots
- Theodore White – Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon
- A. N. Wilson – Sir Walter Scott, John Milton, Hilaire Belloc, Leo Tolstoy, C. S. Lewis, Jesus Iris Murdoch and John Betjeman
- Molly Worthen – United States; Charles Hill, American diplomat and Yale professor
- Marguerite Young – Eugene V. Debs
Autobiographers
- Henry Brooks Adams – The Education of Henry Adams
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali – Somalia; Infidel
- Nirad C. Chaudhuri – The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian
- Henry Cockburn – Scottish; Memorials of His Time
- Frederick Douglass – American; A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, "The Heroic Slave" in Autographs for Freedom, My Bondage and My Freedom and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
- Jens Jacob Eschels – first seafarer's autobiography in German
- Benjamin Franklin – American; The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
- Mahatma Gandhi – Indian; The Story of My Experiments with Truth
- Lee Iacocca – United States;
- Nelson Mandela – South Africa; Long Walk to Freedom
- Frank McCourt – United States;Angela's Ashes
- Ronald Skirth – United Kingdom; The Reluctant Tommy