Biographers Day

Today is Biographers Day, commemorating the day biographer James Boswell met his subject, Samuel Johnson, in a bookshop in 1763. (See Johnson and Boswell: A Biography of Friendship.) Do you often think about the biographer rather than their subject when checking out a book? Have you ever read the biography because you know the biographer is a good writer? 

We've enjoyed biographies by Peter Ackroyd, Robert Caro, Donald Spoto, Diane Middlebrook, Stephen Ambrose, Stacy Schiff, David McCullough, Nancy Milford, Claire Tomalin, Caroline Moorehead, Lytton Strachey, A. N. Wilson, Brenda Maddox, Antonia Fraser, Lee Server, Amanda Foreman, Alison Weir, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Peter Guralnick. We've put together a list of some of the library's more recent acquisitions below - is there a biographer or biography you'd like to recommend? Let us know in the comments!

Manderley For Ever by Tatiana de Rosnay

Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King

Sting Like a Bee: Muhammad Ali vs. the United States of America, 1966-1971 by Leigh Montville 

Dinner With Dimaggio: Memories of an American Hero by Dr. Rock Positano and John Positano 

Ernest Hemingway by Mary V. Dearborn

Goethe: Life as a Work of Art by Rudiger Safranski  

Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary by Joe Jackson

Mockingbird Songs: Harper Lee - A Friendship by Wayne Flynt 

Rosalind: A Biography of Shakespeare's Immortal Heroine by Angela Thirlwell 

Robert Lowell: Setting the River on Fire - A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character by Kay Redfield Jamison

Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast by Megan Marshall 

Dorothy Day: The World Will Be Saved By Beauty - An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother by Kate Hennessy 

The Invention of Angela Carter by Edmund Gordon 

Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films by Molly Haskell

Wrapped in Rainbows: The life of Zora Neale Hurston by Valerie Boyd

Dig If You Will the Picture: Funk, Sex, God and Genius in the Music of Prince by Ben Greenman 

Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes by Michael Sims

Pirate Women: The Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas by Laura Sook Duncombe

The President's Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas by Adrian Miller

From Cradle to Stage: Stories From the Mothers Who Rocked and Raised Rock Stars by Virginia Hanlon Grohl 

Jimmy Buffett: A Good Life All the Way by Ryan White 

Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him by David Henry and Joe Henry

Charlton Heston: Hollywood's Last Icon by Marc Eliot

Ostend: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before the Dark by Volker Weidermann 

Richard Nixon: The Life by John A. Farrell 

Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching For James Brown and the American Soul by James McBride 


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 Links

The 20 Best Biographies and Autobiographies of All Time [Telegraph] 

25 Recommendations For Life Changing Biographies For the Voracious Reader In You [Thought Catalog]

11 Must-Read Biographies About Incredible Women [HuffPost]

15 Best Autobiographies Everyone Should Read at Least Once In Their Life [Lifehack]

Best Biographies [Goodreads]