The Best Books of 2021: Biography

Despite some seriously long odds and against some formidable obstacles, 2021 turned out to be very good, very contentious year for my favorite genre, biography (including quite a few outstanding books about subjects I detest). Authors were hampered, because many indispensable archives were shuttered by COVID-19 restrictions and many travel-plans were likewise scuppered. But they persevered, and some quite impressive books resulted, including the latest entries in multi-volume projects. These were the best of a surprisingly competitive year:

10 The Lives of Lucian Freud by William Feaver (Knopf) – Art critic William Feaver here finishes his two-volume biography of the painter Lucian Freud, an extremely detailed and extremely readable biography of a spikey, difficult man. 

9 Albert Camus and the Human Crisis by Robert Meagher (Pegasus Books) – This fascinating, multifaceted study of the weird and enduring social relevance of Camus is only a kind of biography on one of its many levels, but even so, it sheds more light on the inner man than many full-dress life studies have been.

8 Benedict XVI, Vol. 2 by Peter Seewald (Bloomsbury Continuum) – Seewald concludes his enormously authoritative, enormously sympathetic life of one of the most historic of all modern-era Popes, the first Pope in centuries to resign instead of dying in office. 

7 The Last King of America by Andrew Roberts (Viking) – In this exuberantly readable biography of King George III, Andrew Roberts makes the uphill case that the infamous tyrant of the American Revolution was actually a swell guy, a picture-perfect Enlightened monarch (calling him America’s last king seems a big overreaching, considering that one-half of the country’s adult voting population enthusiastically endorses re-establishing the American monarchy). 

6 The Last Queen by Clive Irving (Pegasus Books) – Likewise this very engaging biography of Queen Elizabeth II by Clive Irving: a bit of overreach to presume the monarchy will end when the Queen dies (if Prince Williams’s son Prince George someday has a firstborn daughter, there’d be a Queen again, for instance) – but the book is nevertheless the best Elizabeth biography in years.

5 A Life of Picasso: The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943 by John Richardson (Penguin Random House)  – John Ricardson’s magisterial multi-volume life of the famous painter concludes with this volume, and the compendious research and clear prose style is unchanged from the earlier volumes, making this one of the greatest artist biographies ever written in English.

4 Pessoa by Richard Zenith (Liveright) – This doorstop biography of the strange, brilliant writer Fernando Pessoa very much feels like the culmination of a lifetime of passionate research; Zenith creates an absorbing narrative out of weird array of inward fragments.

3 Jane Austen Early and Late by Freya Johnston (Princeton) – Much like Robert Meagher’s book on Camus, this fascinating volume by Freya Johnston could be seen as scarcely a formal biography at all – it’s a searching and sensitive study of the early and late writings of Jane Austen that looks to reposition those works in Austen’s creative life.

2 The Triumph of Nancy Reagan by Karen Tumulty (Simon & Schuster) – Karent Tumulty’s terrific biography of First Lady Nancy Reagan is also very much a re-appraisal, designed to assess Nancy Reagan’s impact on the Reagan administration not as the scratchy little caricature she often facilitated but as a three-dimensional person caught up in world-changing events. 

1 The Life She Wished To Live by Ann McCutchan (WW Norton) – The best biography of 2021 was this life of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who’ll be known to most readers only as the author of the perennially beloved children’s classic The Yearling, and its greatness lies chiefly in Ann McCutchan’s willingness to take Rawlings as she finds her, a raw, complicated, immensely interesting person with her share of demons.