Greatest Autobiographies of All Time

Influential autobiographies, memoirs, personal narratives, and life stories ranked by literary significance, cultural impact, historical importance, and enduring readership.

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All Items (98)

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin — Benjamin Franklin (1791)—

The Confessions — Saint Augustine (397)—

The Confessions — Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)—

The Education of Henry Adams — Henry Adams (1907)—

Long Walk to Freedom — Nelson Mandela (1994)—

The Diary of a Young Girl — Anne Frank (1947)—

The Story of My Experiments with Truth — Mahatma Gandhi (1927)—

The Autobiography of Malcolm X — Malcolm X and Alex Haley (1965)—

Dreams from My Father — Barack Obama (1995)—

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass — Frederick Douglass (1845)—

Up from Slavery — Booker T. Washington (1901)—

Speak, Memory — Vladimir Nabokov (1951)—

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — Maya Angelou (1969)—

Angela's Ashes — Frank McCourt (1996)—

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas — Gertrude Stein (1933)—

Born a Crime — Trevor Noah (2016)—

Night — Elie Wiesel (1956)—

Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor Frankl (1946)—

Personal History — Katharine Graham (1997)—

Out of Africa — Isak Dinesen (1937)—

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom — T. E. Lawrence (1926)—

Boy — Roald Dahl (1984)—

Going Solo — Roald Dahl (1986)—

Chronicles: Volume One — Bob Dylan (2004)—

Open — Andre Agassi (2009)—

Educated — Tara Westover (2018)—

The Glass Castle — Jeannette Walls (2005)—

Hillbilly Elegy — J. D. Vance (2016)—

Wild — Cheryl Strayed (2012)—

Just as I Am — Cicely Tyson (2021)—

A Moveable Feast — Ernest Hemingway (1964)—

Memoirs of a Geisha (Life of Mineko Iwasaki) — Mineko Iwasaki (2002)—

Black Boy — Richard Wright (1945)—

My Early Life — Winston Churchill (1930)—

My Life — Bill Clinton (2004)—

Becoming — Michelle Obama (2018)—

The Story of My Life — Helen Keller (1903)—

The Road from Coorain — Jill Ker Conway (1989)—

This Boy's Life — Tobias Wolff (1989)—

Running in the Family — Michael Ondaatje (1982)—

Memoirs — Pablo Neruda (1974)—

Living to Tell the Tale — Gabriel García Márquez (2002)—

A Fortunate Life — A. B. Facey (1981)—

Surprised by Joy — C. S. Lewis (1955)—

Summing Up — W. Somerset Maugham (1938)—

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater — Thomas De Quincey (1821)—

The Autobiography of Mark Twain — Mark Twain (1924)—

The Life of Benvenuto Cellini — Benvenuto Cellini (1558)—

The Words — Jean-Paul Sartre (1964)—

Memoirs of Hadrian — Marguerite Yourcenar (1951)—

Infidel — Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2007)—

Reading Lolita in Tehran — Azar Nafisi (2003)—

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius — Dave Eggers (2000)—

The Liars' Club — Mary Karr (1995)—

Lit — Mary Karr (2009)—

The Color of Water — James McBride (1995)—

Hunger of Memory — Richard Rodriguez (1982)—

When Breath Becomes Air — Paul Kalanithi (2016)—

The Year of Magical Thinking — Joan Didion (2005)—

An American Childhood — Annie Dillard (1987)—

The Duke of Deception — Geoffrey Wolff (1979)—

West with the Night — Beryl Markham (1942)—

Down and Out in Paris and London — George Orwell (1933)—

Homage to Catalonia — George Orwell (1938)—

The Moon's a Balloon — David Niven (1971)—

Kiss Me Like a Stranger — Gene Wilder (2005)—

Born Standing Up — Steve Martin (2007)—

Life — Keith Richards (2010)—

Just Kids — Patti Smith (2010)—

Cash: The Autobiography — Johnny Cash (1997)—

Moonwalk — Michael Jackson (1988)—

My Life in France — Julia Child (2006)—

My Family and Other Animals — Gerald Durrell (1956)—

The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell — Bertrand Russell (1967)—

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! — Richard Feynman (1985)—

What Do You Care What Other People Think? — Richard Feynman (1988)—

The Double Helix — James D. Watson (1968)—

My Brief History — Stephen Hawking (2013)—

Autobiography — Morrissey (2013)—

Born to Run — Bruce Springsteen (2016)—

Greenlights — Matthew McConaughey (2020)—

Finding Me — Viola Davis (2022)—

The Happiest Man on Earth — Eddie Jaku (2020)—

The Choice — Edith Eger (2017)—

Waiting for Snow in Havana — Carlos Eire (2003)—

Persepolis — Marjane Satrapi (2000)—

Memoirs of a Revolutionary — Victor Serge (1951)—

Revolutionary Road to Survival (Life of Deng Xiaoping) — Deng Xiaoping (1984)—

Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number — Jacobo Timerman (1981)—

The Motorcycle Diaries — Ernesto Che Guevara (1993)—

My Autobiography — Charles Chaplin (1964)—

An Autobiography — Jawaharlal Nehru (1936)—

The Story of San Michele — Axel Munthe (1929)—

My Left Foot — Christy Brown (1954)—

All Creatures Great and Small — James Herriot (1972)—

The Long Hard Road Out of Hell — Marilyn Manson (1998)—

Total Recall — Arnold Schwarzenegger (2012)—

A Promised Land — Barack Obama (2020)—