Best Memoirs and Autobiographies of All Time – Chronological

I collected over a dozen lists of the best memoirs and autobiographies from the Internet and compiled them into a single meta-list.  Here are the results, all the books on two or more of the original source lists, organized in chronological order.  To see the same list organized by rank (that is, with the books on the most lists at the top), go here.

1700s

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
(1791) – Benjamin Franklin (on 3 lists)

1800s
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
(1845) – Frederick Douglass (on 4 lists)
Walden (1854) – Henry David Thoreau (on 3 lists)

1900-1949
The Story of My Life (1903) – Helen Keller (on 2 lists)
The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1929) – Mohandas K. Gandhi (on 2 lists)
Good-Bye to All That (1929) – Robert Graves (on 2 lists)
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) – George Orwell (on 2 lists)
Out of Africa (1937) – Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) (on 7 lists)
Homage to Catalonia (1938) – George Orwell (on 2 lists)
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942-1944, pub. 1946) – Anne Frank (on 7 lists)
Black Boy (1945) – Richard Wright (on 4 lists)
Dust Tracks on a Road (1948) – Zora Neale Hurston (on 2 lists)

1950s
Speak, Memory (1951) – Vladimir Nabokov (on 4 lists)
Night
(1956) – Elie Wiesel (on 9 lists)

1960s
A Moveable Feast (pub. 1964) – Ernest Hemingway (on 6 lists)
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) – Malcolm X with Alex Haley (on 5 lists)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) – Maya Angelou (on 12 lists)

1970s
All Creatures Great and Small (1972) – James Herriot (on 2 lists)
Conundrum (1974) – Jan Morris (on 2 lists)
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (1976) – Maxine Hong Kingston (on 5 lists)

1980s
Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir (1983) – Joyce Johnson (on 2 lists)
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985) – Richard Feynman (on 3 lists)
This Boy’s Life (1989) – Tobias Wolff (on 4 lists)

1990s
Girl, Interrupted (1993) – Susanna Kaysen (on 7 lists)
Autobiography of a Face (1994) – Lucy Grealy (on 5 lists)
Long Walk to Freedom (1994) – Nelson Mandela (on 3 lists)
When I Was Puerto Rican (1994) – Esmeralda Santiago (on 2 lists)
The Liars’ Club (1995) – Mary Karr (on 9 lists)
Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995) – Barack Obama (on 8 lists)
A Child Called “It” (1995) – Dave Pelzer (on 2 lists)
Angela’s Ashes (1996) – Frank McCourt (on 9 lists)
The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother (1996) – James McBride (on 5 lists)
Drinking: A Love Story (1996) – Caroline Knapp (on 2 lists)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (1997) – Jean-Dominique Bauby (on 6 lists)
Personal History (1997) – Katharine Graham (on 3 lists)
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster (1997) – Jon Krakauer (on 3 lists)
Tuesdays with Morrie (1997) – Mitch Albom (on 2 lists)
Naked (1997) – David Sedaris (on 2 lists)
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail (1998) – Bill Bryson (on 4 lists)
All Over but the Shoutin’ (1999) – Rick Bragg (on 4 lists)
Lucky (1999) – Alice Sebold (on 3 lists)

2000s
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) – Dave Eggers (on 8 lists)
Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000) – David Sedaris (on 7 lists)
Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000) – Anthony Bourdain (on 6 lists)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000) – Stephen King (on 6 lists)
Experience: A Memoir (2000) – Martin Amis (on 2 lists)
Running with Scissors (2002) – Augusten Burroughs (on 5 lists)
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood (2002) – Alexandra Fuller (on 4 lists)
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (2003) – Azar Nafisi (on 5 lists)
Persepolis (2003) – Marjane Satrapi (on 3 lists)
Dry (2003) – Augusten Burroughs (on 2 lists)
She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders (2003) – Jennifer Finney Boylan (on 2 lists)
First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers (2003) – Loung Ung (on 2 lists)
Chronicles: Volume One (2004) – Bob Dylan (on 2 lists)
The Glass Castle (2005) – Jeannette Walls (on 11 lists)
The Year of Magical Thinking (2005) – Joan Didion (on 10 lists)
Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog (2005) John Grogan (on 2 lists)
Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (2006) – Elizabeth Gilbert (on 6 lists)
I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (2006) – Nora Ephron (on 4 lists)
My Life in France (2006) – Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme (on 4 lists)
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) – Alison Bechdel (on 3 lists)
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (2007) – Ishmael Beah (on 6 lists)
Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life (2007) – Steve Martin (on 5 lists)
Out of Egypt: A Memoir (2007) – Andre Aciman (on 3 lists)
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007) – Haruki Murakami (on 2 lists)
The Mistress’s Daughter (2007) – A.M. Homes (on 2 lists)
The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness (2007) – Elyn R. Saks  (on 2 lists)
Stitches: A Memoir (2009) – David Small (on 2 lists)

2010s
Just Kids (2010) – Patti Smith (on 8 lists)
Life (2010) – Keith Richards (on 4 lists)
Bossypants (2011) – Tina Fey (on 5 lists)
Blood, Bones, & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef (2011) – Gabrielle Hamilton (on 3 lists)
Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns) (2011) – Mindy Kaling (on 3 lists)
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (2011) – Jeanette Winterson (on 2 lists)
The Memory Palace: A Memoir (2011) – Mira Bartok (on 2 lists)
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012) – Cheryl Strayed (on 9 lists)
Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness (2012) – Susannah Cahalan (on 4 lists)
Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir) (2012) – Jenny Lawson (on 3 lists)
Men We Reaped: A Memoir (2013) – Jesmyn Ward (on 6 lists)
I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban (2013) – Malala Yousafzai and Christina Lamb (on 6 lists)
Wave (2013) – Sonali Deraniyagala (on 2 lists)
Coming Clean (2013) – Kimberly Rae Miller (on 2 lists)
H Is for Hawk (2014) – Helen Macdonald (on 3 lists)
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. (2014) – Viv Albertine (on 3 lists)
Yes Please (2014) – Amy Poehler (on 2 lists)
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014) – Bryan Stevenson  (on 2 lists)
Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs (2015) – Sally Mann (on 3 lists)
Negroland: A Memoir (2015) – Margo Jefferson (on 3 lists)
My Life on the Road (2015) – Gloria Steinem (on 3 lists)
Between the World and Me (2015) – Ta-Nehisi Coates (on 2 lists)
Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget (2015) – Sarah Hepola (on 2 lists)
When Breath Becomes Air: What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death (2016) – Paul Kalanithi (on 6 lists)
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (2016) – J.D. Vance (on 2 lists)
The Rules Do Not Apply (2017) – Ariel Levy (on 3 lists)
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017) – Roxane Gay (on 2 lists)
Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat (2017) – Patricia Williams (on 2 lists)
Priestdaddy (2017) – Patricia Lockwood (on 2 lists)
Becoming (2018) – Michelle Obama (on 2 lists)
Joy Enough: A Memoir (2018) – Sarah McColl (on 2 lists)
Educated: A Memoir (2018) – Tara Westover (on 2 lists)