Penguin Lives books in order

Q: "How many books are in the Penguin Lives series?"

"There are 32 books in the Penguin Lives series, published between 1960 and 2011."

Q: "What is the first book in the Penguin Lives series?"

"The first book in the Penguin Lives series is Abraham Lincoln, published in 1960."

Q: "Which volume did Carol Shields write in the Penguin Lives series?"

"Carol Shields wrote the Jane Austen volume for the Penguin Lives series, published in 2001. She had long admired Austen's work and brought her novelist's sensibility to the life, focusing on Austen's creative process and the conditions under which she wrote. The Penguin Lives series as a whole ran from 1999 to 2011 and included biographies of figures ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Julia Child, each written by a different author."

Reading order

#	Title	Published	Author	Buy on Amazon
1	Abraham Lincoln	1960	Carol Shields	Buy
2	Mao Zedong: A Life	1999	Carol Shields	Buy
3	Mozart: A Life	1999	Carol Shields	Buy
4	Marcel Proust	1999	Carol Shields	Buy
5	Crazy Horse	1999	Carol Shields	Buy
6	Saint Augustine	1999	Carol Shields	Buy
7	James Joyce	1999	Carol Shields	Buy
8	Rosa Parks	2000	Carol Shields	Buy
9	Virginia Woolf	2000	Carol Shields	Buy
10	Woodrow Wilson	2000	Carol Shields	Buy
11	Herman Melville	2000	Carol Shields	Buy
12	Leonardo da Vinci: A Life	2000	Carol Shields	Buy
13	Dante	2001	Carol Shields	Buy
14	Jane Austen	2001	Carol Shields	Buy
15	Buddha	2001	Carol Shields	Buy
16	Simone Weil	2001	Carol Shields	Buy
17	Andy Warhol: A Biography	2001	Carol Shields	Buy
18	Martin Luther King, Jr.: A Life	2001	Carol Shields	Buy
19	Joseph Smith	2002	Carol Shields	Buy
20	Winston Churchill: A Life	2002	Carol Shields	Buy
21	Pope John XXIII	2002	Carol Shields	Buy
22	Charles Dickens	2002	Carol Shields	Buy
23	Elvis Presley	2002	Carol Shields	Buy
24	Saint Therese of Lisieux	2003	Carol Shields	Buy
25	Robert E. Lee	2003	Carol Shields	Buy
26	Frank Lloyd Wright: A Life	2004	Carol Shields	Buy
27	George Herbert Walker Bush	2004	Carol Shields	Buy
28	Napoleon	2006	Carol Shields	Buy
29	Julia Child	2007	Carol Shields	Buy
30	Joan of Arc	2008	Carol Shields	Buy
31	Martin Luther	2008	Carol Shields	Buy
32	Branch Rickey: A Life	2011	Carol Shields	Buy

The Penguin Lives series was launched in the late 1990s with the idea of pairing prominent writers with historical figures they had a genuine connection to. Each volume is short, around 200 pages, written for a general reader rather than an academic audience. The range of subjects is wide: from Mozart and Mao Zedong to Rosa Parks and Elvis Presley, with entries on saints, artists, presidents, and revolutionaries.

Carol Shields wrote the Jane Austen volume in 2001. Shields had spent much of her career thinking about how women write and under what constraints, and Austen was a natural subject: a woman of limited financial and social freedom who nonetheless produced some of the most durable novels in the English language. Shields’s biography approaches Austen with the attention to domestic detail and quiet irony that characterises her own fiction. The Penguin Lives series continued until 2011, and the full collection covers an unusually broad span of human history and culture.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many books are in the Penguin Lives series?

There are 32 books in the Penguin Lives series, published between 1960 and 2011.

What is the first book in the Penguin Lives series?

The first book in the Penguin Lives series is Abraham Lincoln, published in 1960.

Which volume did Carol Shields write in the Penguin Lives series?

Carol Shields wrote the Jane Austen volume for the Penguin Lives series, published in 2001. She had long admired Austen’s work and brought her novelist’s sensibility to the life, focusing on Austen’s creative process and the conditions under which she wrote. The Penguin Lives series as a whole ran from 1999 to 2011 and included biographies of figures ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Julia Child, each written by a different author.

Reading order#

Frequently Asked Questions

Reading order