Biography & Memoir

Maya Angelou’s empowering and moving memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is newly introduced and illustrated in this beautifully crafted Folio edition.

The Folio Society presents an exquisite gold-and-leather hardback of Essays by Renaissance nobleman and thinker Michel de Montaigne.

Night is one of the first and one of the greatest Holocaust memoirs. The new Folio Society edition is illustrated with art by survivors and witnesses and is published alongside Elie Wiesel’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech.

The Folio Society’s three-volume set of the journals of Captain Cook from 1768–1779, published to mark the first voyage’s 250th anniversary, is accompanied by a chart of the voyages bound in cloth.

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell’s brutally honest account of his experience as a militiaman during the Spanish Civil War. The Folio Society edition is illustrated with 35 black and white photographs sourced from Magnum and Catalan archives.

Van Gogh’s famous letters transform our understanding of one of the most haunting figures in western culture. 

The gripping life-story of Douglas Bader, double amputee and Second World War fighter ace.

The captivating memoir of an unusual 19th-century childhood from pioneering wood engraver, and Charles Darwin’s granddaughter, Gwen Raverat.

Chateaubriand requested that his memoirs remain unpublished until after his death lest he be forced to be ‘less frank and truthful’. The result is a hugely entertaining autobiography, providing a vivid picture of France during the most tumultuous period of her history.

Paul Brickhill’s account of 617 Squadron’s legendary bombing raid is an exhilarating read, showcased in a suitably dramatic red and black binding.

Blending investigative journalism with the personal approach of a writer both fascinated and appalled by her subject, this is an award-winning portrait of life under ‘one of the most savage surveillance regimes ever known’. With previously unpublished photographs by the author.

Eric Newby’s story of escape and evasion, dedicated to the ordinary Italian people who saved his life, remains funny, vivid and deeply moving.

The food memoir that inspired a new way of thinking about what we eat and how we live. Illustrated with 12 pages of black and white photographs chronicling the author’s remarkable life.

Nepotism, murder and debauchery abound in this gripping portrait of a family that bribed their way to power in Renaissance Italy. The first illustrated edition, this is designed in series with Hibbert’s The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici.