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[moocowmoo]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yes... starts his career as a young idealist, sentenced to death for political radicalism, pardoned from death but not before being marched out in front of firing squad believing he was going to die. Spends 3-4 years in Siberia with hardened criminals, his only book there The New Testament. Comes back, churns out masterpiece after masterpiece, amid unsuccessful love affair, poverty due to compulsive gambling, death of children from illness, seizures due to epilepsy. His life is fascinating and his books are just breath taking. The guy suffered a lot but he still had so much love in his heart.

F Scott Fitzgerald led a colorful life too. His wife Zelda had a personality and will as big as his, and their life was glamorous and tragic like many of his characters.

[RedKing]

I'd second Lovecraft and Hemingway. And I suppose Dostoevsky, although personally I find Dostoevsky dreadful to read (and it seems an odd choice for an English class, since it'd all be in translation)

Kipling would be a great one for talking about how symbolism has changed, but his writing itself never really changed through his life.

[XXSockXX]

For Lovecraft I'd start with the biography by S.T. Joshi. It's focused on how Lovecraft's life influenced his worldview and how his writing changed with his worldview in later life. His racism became much less pronounced over time and is not really present in later works, for example.

Since the Hobbit movie is coming, you could also do Tolkien (if you like fantasy). The biography by Humphrey Carter tries to explain a lot of Tolkien's work from his life, it's really interesting.   

[lordcooper]

For something a little more current, how about Terry Pratchett?  Dude's definitely been going through some changes lately. 

[DJ]

Kafka.

[the_donut]

Charles Dickens is always a good choice for autobiographies. He has so much written about him. There are even genealogical trees on wikipedia to his great great great grandchildren

[Sir Finkus]

(and it seems an odd choice for an English class, since it'd all be in translation)

Ha, I never even thought of that.  That's a pretty good point.

Orwell would be another good choice.

[Bdthemag]

(and it seems an odd choice for an English class, since it'd all be in translation)

Ha, I never even thought of that.  That's a pretty good point.

Orwell would be another good choice.

Another pretty good choice, he was in India for awhile serving as a police officer in Burma along with his time spent in the Spanish Civil War (He wrote a book about his experiences in the war, by the way.)

[penguinofhonor]

Do they have to have written books? Because I really like Audre Lorde, a black lesbian poet and essayist and outspoken critic of second wave feminism. She's written some good autobiographical stuff so there's something to draw from.

You'll stand out from everyone else who're going to be doing white guys or Sylvia Plath.

[Jimmy]

I won't suggest an author but I will give a few words of advice.

Whichever author you pick, make sure you can stomach reading a good portion of their work. It's no good just finding autobiographies and copypasting the stuff you find.

In relation to the above, make sure they're books that you can finish in a reasonable amount of time. Authors like Dostoyevsky (aside from the obvious reasons discussed earlier) write books that are bricks of text. Be kind to yourself and pick someone easier to read.

Poets are actually good choices here, since often their works are pretty short and usually very self-centered. Novel writers are harder since you have to slog through the plot to pick out the correlations with the author's life. Poets just spew it onto the page.

[Wayward Device]

H.P. Lovecraft, he was sick throughout most of his childhood and also had night terrors throughout most of his life, influencing most of his work. He was also rather racist, believing that people of English descent had a superior culture and that opinion definitely influenced a lot of his work. Really, he's almost perfect for your situation.

Lovecraft is an interesting one, as has already been mentioned numerous times. Just thought I'd pop in a little point about his racism. While its true that he did go for the whole White English people the best, other races suck, mixed race people are definitely either in a cult, servants to the servants of unknowable cosmic horrors or hybrids with said horrors thing, its worth noting that this is really within the context of "and humanity is utterly insignificant" and shit". Also, the white/English decent characters, who are usually the protagonist, often come as close to releasing terrible horrors with their "science" just as regularly as any of the degenerate cults that pop up so often.

"or how the life of an author has changed over time with critiques citing specific pieces of literature."

Um, I'm guessing this is basically how has critical/audience view of them changed over time. In which case, lovecraft would be awesome 'cos you can come at it from the angle of "not appreciated/popular in his lifetime, later recognized as one of the most influential early 20th century horror writers to the point where critics/ the growing audience have to deal with the racial themes that would have been relatively uncontroversial, if a little right wing, in the authors own time".     

[martinuzz]

Research Noam Chomsky, if you like to understand more about anarchy. The good kind of anarchy that is.

[Slayerhero90]

Banana.

[Un67]

While I thank everyone for the input, I've already got an author now. Thanks everyone