Memoir Classics: Free EPUB Editions

The first-person life is the oldest nonfiction form and the one most changed by the printing press: cheap books made it possible for a person without title or office to sell their own history. This shelf begins in 1789 with Olaudah Equiano buying his freedom and publishing the story, and ends in 1901 with Booker T. Washington describing an institution he built.

The range covers the three great engines of the form: the slave narrative, which had to prove its own truth to be believed; the self-made man’s account, from Franklin onward; and the conversion story, religious or political. Several titles here are all three at once.

Every memoir on this shelf

Ten titles, oldest first, from a slave narrative to a self-made millionaire’s account.

Year	Title	Author	Form	Words	Reading time
397	The Confessions of St. Augustine	Augustine of Hippo	Spiritual autobiography	111,892	6 h
1789	The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano	Olaudah Equiano	Slave narrative	85,638	5 h
1791	The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin	Benjamin Franklin	Autobiography	65,000	4 h
1845	Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass	Frederick Douglass	Slave narrative	41,000	2 h
1861	Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl	Harriet Jacobs	Slave narrative	81,000	5 h
1869	The Innocents Abroad	Mark Twain	Travel writing	193,000	11 h
1872	Roughing It	Mark Twain	Travel writing	165,000	9 h
1883	Life on the Mississippi	Mark Twain	Memoir	148,000	8 h
1901	Up from Slavery	Booker T. Washington	Autobiography	73,000	4 h
1903	The Story of My Life	Helen Keller	Autobiography	134,000	7 h

How this list was made

Titles are listed when the book page records Memoir, Autobiography or Slave narrative as the form or among the genres. Diaries and letters are on another shelf.

Word counts are for the complete texts here. The two longest, Equiano and Franklin, are also the two most quoted by historians, which is not a coincidence: both kept documents.

Questions readers ask

Are these reliable as history?

They are testimony, not record. Each was written to persuade, and the book pages say who the author was arguing with — Equiano with the slave trade, Douglass with American Christianity, Franklin with his own reputation.

What is the best first read?

The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, at about 40,000 words: short, plain, and structured like an argument. It is also the most widely taught.

Why is Ben Franklin here?

Because his Autobiography invented the template — a man writing his own life as an instruction manual — that most of the later entries answer or reject.

Part of the complete catalogue and the themed reading lists. Nearby shelves: Satire · Historical Fiction · Short Stories · Romance · Coming of Age · authors A–Z · word counts and reading times.