I love Heather Clark's Red Comet and am currently reading Mary V. Dearborn's Carson McCullers: A Life.
I'm looking for similar books, and here are some of the features of these books I like:
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I love how all-encompassing they are, and that they draw on a surplus of primary sources (diaries, letters) to give you this really complete view of the subject's life. I want to know what Sylvia Plath ate for lunch on Nauset beach!
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I tend to prefer writings by and about women, though this is not a requirement. For example, Beverly Gage's G-Man is on my To Be Read list. I also like depictions of gender expression and queerness.
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I like complicated figures and people who aren't necessarily likable. I have enjoyed reading depictions and understanding of mental illness.
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Can't figure out a way to say this that isn't crass, but I enjoy a tragedy or a life cut short. In the Great Green Room: The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown by Amy Gray is on my list.
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I've been loving a looooong book.
In summation, I guess you could say I like to read the minutia of an artist's tragic life, so what do you have?
by HarveyPeligro
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Maybe Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon?
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney is fiction, so not strictly a biography, but it was based on a heavily researched real person.
A Star Is Bored, likewise, is a fictionalized account of Byron Lane’s time working for Carrie Fisher as a personal assistant.
Marlene Dietrich by her daughter Maria Riva is a fantastic biographical epic that checks most of these boxes
*Rimbaud* by Graham Robb is really good and meet a lot of your criteria apart from gender.
His life (1854-1891) is quite extraordinary:
He was a child prodigy, who wrote incredible, subversive and incandescent poetry, and stopped writing at the age of 20.
He had a scandalous, tumultuous affair with a married man ten years his senior, the poet Paul Verlaine, which ended violently.
After giving up poetry, he lived a life of adventure, roaming Europe and then further afield (Cyprus, Java). He spent 10 years in Abyssinia where he worked as a trader, explorer, occasional gun runner.
He was an eternal walker, nicknamed the man with the soles of wind by Verlaine, and died a pretty tragic death at the age of 37.
Rimbaud the seer and Rimbaud the rogue, dark and subversive, incandescent and sensual, the hero of many an artist and musician ever since.
I don’t know if it is a type of a woman you are interested in but there is quite interesting biography Journey into the Whirlwind by Evgenia Ginsburg. She is extremely educated woman, journalist and historian. During the big terror in USSR she was sent to Gulag where she spent more than 10 years. She managed not to survive only, but found love, built family. Terrifying experience with so called happy end.
*Cleopatra: A Life* by Stacy Schiff
https://www.amazon.com/Witches-Suspicion-Betrayal-Hysteria-Salem/dp/031620059X not exactly what you want but I can’t pass an opportunity to recommend this
I loved G-Man!
Since you ” like depictions of gender expression and queerness”, J. Edgar Hoover was very likely gay and in a long relationship with an agent who was also his second in command. Gage talks about this quite a bit. He definitely also meets “complicated figures and people who aren’t necessarily likable”, Gage in the intro says that she does not admire Hoover.
Every chapter is clear, concise, and starts with a great little historical picture. I loved reading this book and also feel a lot more informed on 20th century history since Hoover was head of the FBI through EIGHT presidents.
Jung Chang’s Wild Swans is loooooong and tells the story of the author’s grandmother and mother. It’s not super detailed all the way through but it’s pretty damn epic women’s history
*A Woman of No Importance* by Sonia Purnell is about Virginia Hall, one of the most badass women to have ever lived. She was supposed to be a Baltimore socialite but, instead, spied for the British in France during WWII. She was intelligent, courageous, resourceful, adventurous, and never gave up.