Fictional Biographies & Memoirs
- Humorous Lives: Fictional Memoirs
- Fictional Lives Through History
- Dramatic Lives: Fictional Biographies
- Classics of Personal Journeys
Scenes of Clerical Life
Scenes of Clerical Life, which appeared in book form in 1858 (after serial publication in the previous year), was the first published fictio…
The Mountebank
Andrew Lackaday, an English orphan, was born and brought up in a French circus. He becomes a highly skilled mimic and juggler. He plies his …
The Watsons
This fragment of a novel was written by Jane Austen in 1804 and remained untitled and unpublished until her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh…
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in which she argued that women are not naturally inferior…
My Lady Ludlow
This novella by the acclaimed Elizabeth Gaskell follows the reminiscences and life of aristocratic Lady Ludlow, told through the eyes of one…
The American Claimant
The American Claimant is an 1892 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The story focuses on the class differences and expectatio…
This Side of Paradise
Amory Blaine grew up in a wealthy family and was given an Ivy League education. Without a need to learn a profession, he chiefly dabbled in …
Leave it to PSmith
Freddie Threepwood and his uncle are in difficulties. Freddie wants a thousand pounds to start a bookmaker’s business and to marry Eve, whil…
Marguerite de Valois
A historical fiction novel set in Paris (1572) during Charles IX's reign and the French Wars of Religion. Marguerite de Valois, daughter of …
Helping Himself
Helping Himself, or Grant Thornton's Ambition deals with the grit and determination of Grant, a 15 year old farmer's boy whose father is dea…
Probable Sons
Little Milly is left an orphan after the death of her mother and sent to live with her bachelor uncle, who has no use for children, especial…
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Johnson's only novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, was originally published anonymously in 1912. It is a fictional novel written …
Far from the Madding Crowd
Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and offers in ample measure the details of English rural life that Hardy so…
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is written in the first person and is virtually a fictional autobiography of “Pip” from his childhood, through often pain…
Mary Cary, Frequently Martha
"My name is Mary Cary. I live in the Yorkburg Female Orphan Asylum. You may think nothing happens in an Orphan Asylum. It does. The orp…
Anything Once
An unlikely pair of wanderers they were; the orphan girl Lou and her travelling partner Jim Botts. Jim appeared in need of following some ap…
This Side of Paradise
This Side of Paradise is the debut novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1920, and taking its title from a line of the Rupert Brooke po…
The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders
Defoe wrote this novel after his work as a journalist and pamphleteer. By 1722, Defoe had become recognized as a novelist, with the success …
Not George Washington
It has been said that behind every successful man is a good woman. This is certainly true in the case of James Orlebar Cloyster. However, so…
The King of Schnorrers
Manasseh da Costa, protagonist of this hilarious novel, is a schnorrer (beggar) who lives on the charitable contributions of the Jews of lat…