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Anarchist Biographies & Memoirs

Mikhail Bakunin, 1814-1876
  • E. H. Carr. Michael Bakunin (1937; revised 1975) (Carr was a Marxist)
  • Anthony Masters. Bakunin: The Father of Anarchism (1974)
  • Arthur Mendel. Michael Bakunin: Roots of Apocalypse (1981)
  • Aileen Kelly. Mikhail Bakunin: A Study in the Psychology and Politics of Utopianism. (1982)
  • Mark Leier. Bakunin: The Creative Passion (2006)
  • Max Nettlau, Errico Malatesta: The Biography of an Anarchist (1922, 1924)
  • Robyinski. Nechaev and Bakunin: Left Libertarianism's Lavendar Lineage. (1994) (Northcote, Vic: Autonomous Tendency)

    • Alexander Berkman, 1870-1936.
  • Alexander Berkman. Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (Prison memoir)
  • Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman. Nowhere at Home: Letters from Exile of Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman, edited by Richard Drinnon & Anna Maria Drinnon
  • Kenneth C. Wenzer, Anarchists Adrift: Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman (1996)

    • Noam Chomsky, 1928- .
  • Robert F. Barsky: Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent. Available electronically at http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/chomsky/chomsky/

    • Stuart Christie.
  • Stuart Christie. Granny Made Me an Anarchist: General Franco, the Angry Brigade, and Me (2004)
  • General Franco Made Me A Terrorist
  • Edward Heath Made Me Angry

    • Dorothy Day, 1897-1980.
  • The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography (1952)

    • Voltairine De Cleyre, 1866-1912
  • Paul Avrich. An American Anarchist: The Life of Voltairine De Cleyre (1978)
  • Eugenia C. Delamotte. Voltairine De Cleyre and the Revolution of the Mind
  • Goldman, Emma. Voltairine de Cleyre (1914, 1932) (essay)
  • Matthews, Henry W. Voltairine de Cleyre: The Making of an Anarchist (MA Thesis: Old Dominion University; 1975)

    • Sam Dolgoff, 1902-1994.
  • Sam Dolgoff. Fragments: A Memoir (1986)

    • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
  • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie
  • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975
  • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War

    • Buenaventura Durruti, 1896-1936.
  • Buenaventura Durruti by Peter E. Newell
  • Abel Paz. Durutti: The People Armed

    • William Godwin.
  • George Woodcock. William Godwin: A Biographical Study (1989)

    • Emma Goldman, 1869-1940.
  • Emma Goldman. Living My Life (two volumes) [available online]
  • Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman. Nowhere at Home: Letters from Exile of Emma Goldman & Alexander Berkman, edited by Richard Drinnon & Anna Maria Drinnon
  • Emma Goldman. Vision on Fire: Emma Goldman on the Spanish Revolution, edited by David Porter. (1985)

  • Richard Drinnon. Rebel in Paradise: A Biography of Emma Goldman (1961, 1983) (the "standard" biography)
  • Candace Falk. Love, Anarchy, and Emma Goldman (1984, 1990) (biography criticized by some anarchists as de-emphasizing anarchism; focuses on relationship w/ Ben Reitman, 1908-1917)
  • Alice Wexler. Two volumes An Intimate Life (1984) and Emma Goldman in Exile: From the Russian Revolution to the Spanish Civil War (1989) (placing her in context in the movement; relationship with other anarchists & activists)
  • Martha Solomon. Emma Goldman (1987, 1989) (focuses on Emma Goldman "as a writer and rhetorician")
  • John Chalberg (1991) Emma Goldman: American Individualist (shorter)
  • Marian Morton. Emma Goldman and the American Left: Nowhere at Home (1992) (a political biography, contextualizing Emma with CP, Socialists, etc.)
  • Hippolyte Havel. "Biographical Sketch" (1910) (40-page sketch in Anarchism and Other Essays by Emma Goldman; Havel was one of Emma's lovers)
  • "Emma Goldman" (A&E Biography? or PBS Biography? I have it on tape)
  • Kenneth C. Wenzer, Anarchists Adrift: Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman (1996)

    • Paul Goodman, 1911-1972
  • Paul Goodman. Five Years: Thoughts During a Useless Time (1966)

    • Jean Grave
  • Louis Patsouras. The Anarchism of Jean Grave (2001)

    • Peter Kropotkin, 1842-1921
  • Peter Kropotkin. Memoirs of a Revolutionist (1889)
  • George Woodcock & Ivan Avakumovic. The Anarchist Prince: A Biographical Study of Peter Kropotkin (1971)

    • John Henry Mackay, 1864-1933
  • Hubert Kennedy. Anarchist of Love: The Secret Life of John Henry Mackay (2002) (available online at http://home.pacbell.net/dendy/AoLove.pdf)

    • Ricardo Flores Magón, 1874-1922
  • Mitch Verter's bio sketch of Flores Magon in Dreams of Freedom (anthology)
  • Ward S. Albro. Always a Rebel: Ricardo Flores Magon and the Revolution (1992)
  • Paul Avrich, ed. "Prison Letters of Ricardo Flores Magon to Lilly Sarnoff" International Review of Social History v.22: pp. 379-422 (1977)
  • Douglas Day. The Prison Notebooks of Ricardo Flores Magon (1991) (a novel, based on Magón's letters)

    • Nestor Makhno, 1889-1935
  • Alexandre Skirda. Nestor Makhno: Anarchy's Cossack: The Struggle for Free Soviets in the Ukraine 1917-1921 (AK Press 2004)

    • Errico Malatesta, 1853-1932
  • Errico Malatesta. Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, ed. Vernon Richards (1965) (out of print)
  • Max Nettlaw. Errico Malatesta: The Biography of an Anarchist (1924)

    • Judith Malina, 1926-
  • Judith Malina. The Diaries of Judith Malina: 1947-1957.

    • Albert Meltzer, 1920-1996
  • Albert Meltzer, I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels: Sixty Years of Commonplace Life and Anarchist Agitation (1996)

    • Louise Michel, 1830-1905.
  • Louise Michel. Red Virgin: The Memoirs of Louise Michel (1981) edited & translated by Bullett Lowry & Elizabeth Ellington Gunter (1981)

  • Edith Thomas. Louise Michel (translated from the French by Penelope Williams, 1980)

    • Johann Most
  • Biography by Rudolf Rocker

    • Lucy Parsons, 1853-1942
  • Carolyn Ashbaugh. (biography of Lucy Parsons which falsely claims that she joined the Communist Party in 1939; Parsons worked with the Natl Committee of the Intl Labor Defense from 1925 onward, but did not join the CP.)

    • Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, 1809-1865
  • D. W. Brogan. Proudhon (1934)
  • Edward Hyams. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: His Revolutionary Life, Mind and Works (1979)
  • George Woodcock. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: A Biography (1987)

    • Rudolf Rocker, 1873-1958.
  • Rudolf Rocker. The London Years
  • Rudolf Rocker. Behind Barbed Wire & Bars (prison memoir; internment during WWI)
  • Mina Graur. An Anarchist Rabbi: The Life and Teachings of Rudolf Rocker (1997)

    • Helen Rossetti and Olivia Rossetti
  • A Girl Among the Anarchists by Isabel Meredith (1903) (Meredith was a pseudonym for Helen & Olivia; this is a semi-biographical novel about their youthful experiences)
    • Ramor Ryan
  • Ramor Ryan. Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile (AK Press 2006)
    • Victor Serge
  • Victor Serge. Memoirs of a Revolutionary.

    • Sidney Solomon, 1911-2004.
  • Sidney Solomon, 1911-2004. Oral history at http://anarchism.ws/people/sidneysolomon.html

    • Carlo Tresca, 1879-1943
  • Nunzio Pernicone, Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel (2005)

    • Ossip Tsebry
  • Memories of a Makhnovist Partisan (2002)

    • Bartolomeo Vanzetti
  • Story of a Proletarian Life (Berkeley: Kate Sharpley Library, 2001)

    • Voline (Vsevolod Eikhenbaum), 1882-1945
  • Voline & Cantine; Holley (transl.). The Unknown Revolution, 1917-1921 (Freedom Press, London, 1955; originally published in French, 1947, as Book III of La Revolution Inconnue) (Anarchist memoir of the Russian Revolution.)

    • George Woodcock, 1912-1995
  • George Fetherling. The Gentle Anarchist: A Life of George Woodcock (1998)

    • Various.
  • Paul Horowitz. The Anarchists (1964)
  • Paul Avrich. Anarchist Portraits (1988)
  • Paul Avrich. The Russian Anarchists (1967)
  • Philip S. Foner, editor. The Autobiographies of the Haymarket Martyrs (1969)

    • still trying to find bios ...

    • Emile Armand
    • Marie Louise Berneri, 1918-1949
    • Camillo Berneri, -1937
    • Adolf Brand, 1874-1945
    • Lev Chernyi, 18??-1921
    • Leon Czolgosz, 1873-1901 (assassinated Pres. McKinley; PBS biography)
    • Dr. Marie Equi
    • Lorenzo Komboa Ervin (wasn't there a memoir?)
    • Sebastien Faure, 1858-1942
    • Francisco Ferrer
    • Daniel Guerin, 1904-1988
    • Senna Hoy (Johannes Holzmann)
    • Joseph Labadie
    • Gregori Maximoff, 1893-1950
    • Federica Montseny, 1905-1994
    • Ito Noe, 1895-1923 (murdered with Osugi Sakae)
    • Nikolai Ogarev
    • Fernand Pelloutier, 1867-1901
    • Robert Reitzel, 1849-1898
    • Nicola Sacco, 1891-1927
    • Osugi Sakae, 1885-1923 (murdered with Ito Noe)
    • Kotoku Shusui, 1871-1911
    • Clara Solomon, 1913-2000
    • Max Stirner, 1806-1956 (most famous individualist anarchist)
    • Carlo Tresca; anti-fascist; lover/companion of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn; assassinated in NY
    • Benjamin Tucker, 1854-1939
    • Bartolomeo Vanzetti, 1888-1927
    • Giuseppe Zangara, 1900-1933. Blaise Picchi, The Five Weeks of Giuseppe Zangara: The Man Who Would Assassinate FDR (1998)
    • Emiliano Zapata, 1879-1919

    Others, not anarchists

    • Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (2002)
    • Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, 1890-1964 (labor activist but part of anarchist milieu). Words on Fire: The Life and Writing of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1987) by Rosalyn Fraad Baxandall; Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, The Alderson Story: My Life as a Political Prisoner (1955); Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, The Rebel Girl: An Autobiography: My First Life (1906-1926) (1973); Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, I Speak My Own Piece: Autobiography of the 'Rebel Girl' (1955)
    • Big Bill Haywood, 1869-1928 (Wobbly & labor radical; friendly to anarchism but more closely identified as a socialist) - PBS Biography; Bill Haywood's Book: The Autobiography of William D. Haywood (1966)
    • Joe Hill. Wallace Stegner, Joe Hill (1969) (fictional biography); Ture Nerman, biography of Joe Hill; PBS biography
    • Mother Jones, 1830-1930. The Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925) (Mother Jones was critical of anarchism but traveled in similiar milieu)
    • William Morris (more of a socialist)
    • Huey Newton, "Revolutionary Suicide"
    • George Orwell. Homage to Catalonia (Orwell was not an anarchist but this memoir talks about anarchists in the Spanish Civil War.)
    • Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (1999)
    • Georges Sorel, 1847-1922 (syndicalist, not really anarchist)
    • Leo Tolstoy (Christian anarcho-pacifist)
    • Confino, Michael (ed.) Daughter of a Revolutionary: Natalie Herzen and the Bakunin-Nechayev Circle, trans. Hilary Sternberg and Lydia Bott (LaSalle, IL: Library, 1974)

    Reviews & Bibliographies of biographies & quick online sketches

    Reading Guides & Study Guides

    What do you want to get out of the reading group?
    LQ: deeper understanding of history, understanding of what leads people to radicalism & anarchism in particular














































    updated 10/05/08