Biographical fiction is fiction about the life of a real person. It often doesn’t fit easily into other, more common categories. I am making a distinction here between imaginative fiction that includes historical people and fiction that bases itself in the known facts of the person’s life. I am also distinguishing historical fiction that follows real events (not included on this list) and fiction that concentrates on the life of a historical person (included).
- Adam, Ruth, A House in the Country (herself and her family)
- Aggeler, Geoffrey, Horses of the Night (Christopher Marlowe)
- Alvarez, Julia, In the Time of the Butterflies (political activists, the Mirabal sisters)
- Amend, Allison, Enchanted Islands (spies Frances and Ainsley Conway)
- Bagnold, Enid, The Happy Foreigner (herself)
- Baker, Jo, A Country Road, A Tree (Samuel Beckett)
- Barbeau-Lavalette, Anaïs, Suzanne (poet Suzanne Meloche)
- Beauregard, Mark, The Whale: A Love Story (Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne)
- Berest, Anne, The Postcard (Berest’s family)
- Birch, Carol, Orphans of the Carnival (carnival performer Julia Pastrana)
- Bloom, Amy, White Houses (Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena Hickok)
- Carey, Edward, Little (Madame Tussaud)
- Chevalier, Tracy, Remarkable Creatures (paleontologists Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot)
- Comyns, Barbara, Sisters by a River (writer Comyns and her family)
- Cullhed, Elin, Euphoria (poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes)
- Darznik, Jasmin, Song of a Captive Bird (Iranian poet and movie maker Forugh Farrokhzad)
- Dutton, Danielle, Margaret the First (Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle)
- Ebershoff, David, The 19th Wife (Mormon wife and activist Ann Elizabeth Young)
- Eggers, David, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (himself)
- Erickson, Carolly, The Last Wife of Henry VIII (Catherine Parr)
- Fowler, Therese Anne, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (Zelda Fitzgerald)
- Frame, Janet, Owls Do Cry (herself)
- Franklin, Miles, My Brilliant Career (herself)
- Galgut, Damon, Arctic Summer (E. M. Forster)
- Gorokhova, Elena, A Train to Moscow (herself)
- Hickey, Christina Dwyer, The Narrow Land (Edward and Jo Hopper)
- Horan, Nancy, Under the Wide and Starry Sky (Robert Louis and Fanny Stevenson)
- Keaney, Brian, The Alphabet of Heart’s Desire (Thomas De Quincey)
- Kelly, Mary Pat, Galway Bay (Kelly’s great-great grandmother)
- Kidd, Sue Monk, The Invention of Wings (abolitionists Angelina and Sarah Grimké)
- Laing, Olivia, Crudo (writer Kathy Acker)
- Lofts, Norah, Here Was a Man (Sir Walter Raleigh)
- Lowry, Elizabeth, The Chosen (Thomas Hardy)
- Mantel, Hilary, Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell), Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell)
- Martinetti, Anne, Guillaume Lebeau, and Alexandre Franc, Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie (Agatha Christie)
- McLain, Paula, Circling the Sun (pilot Beryl Markham)
- Merrell, Susan Scarf, Shirley (Shirley Jackson)
- Mitford, Nancy, Love in a Cold Climate (the Mitford family), The Pursuit of Love (the Mitford family)
- Morgan, Jude, Charlotte and Emily (the Brontës), Passion (the Romantic poets, Mary Shelley, Lady Caroline Lamb, Fanny Brawne), The Secret Life of William Shakespeare (William Shakespeare)
- Napolitano, Ann, A Good Hard Look (Flannery O’Connor)
- O’Connor, Joseph, Ghost Light (poet John Millington Synge and Molly Allgood), Shadowplay (Bram Stoker)
- O’Connor, Nuala, Miss Emily (Emily Dickinson), Nora (Nora Barnacle and James Joyce)
- O’Farrell, Maggie, Hamnet (Anne Hathaway and William Shakespeare)
- Ondaatje, Michael, The Cat’s Table (himself)
- Orringer, Julie, The Invisible Bridge (Orringer’s grandparents)
- Ponnambalam, Devika, I Am Not Your Eve (Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian wife)
- Russell, Mary Doria, Doc (Doc Holliday)
- Sarton, May, The Magnificent Spinster (Ann Longfellow Thorp)
- Stachniak, Eva, Empress of the Night (Catherine the Great), The Winter Palace (Catherine the Great)
- Stone, Irving, Immortal Wife (Jessie Benton Fremont and John C. Fremont)
- Szado, Ania, Studio St.-Ex (Antoine de St. Exupery)
- Tan, Twan Eng, The House of Doors (W. Somerset Maugham)
- Thorpe, Adam, Hodd (Robin Hood)
- Tóibín, Colm, The Magician (Thomas Mann), The Master (Henry James), Nora Webster (Tóibín’s mother)
- Tokarczuk, Olga, The Books of Jacob (Jacob Frank)
- Trigiani, Adriana, The Shoemaker’s Wife (Trigiani’s grandparents)
- Vreeland, Susan, Clara and Mr. Tiffany (Tiffany artist Clara Driscoll)
- Weir, Alison, The Marriage Game (Elizabeth I)
- West, Rebecca, The Fountain Overflows (West and her family)
- Wilcox, Victoria, Inheritance (Doc Holliday)
- Wood, Naomi, Mrs. Hemingway (Hemingway’s wives)
- Woolf, Virginia, Flush: A Biography (Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning and their dog, Flush)
What? Me Read? 