Author profile by name (Open Library) API

Resolve an author name to an Open Library author profile: canonical name, alternate names, birth/death dates, living/deceased status, work count, top work, top subjects, and a trimmed biography. Joins the author search and the author-detail endpoints into one record. Answers 'who is this author', 'how many works has X written', 'author bio + key subjects'.

Price$0.01per request

MethodPOST

Route/v1/data/author-profile

StatusLive

MIME typeapplication/json

Rate limit60/minute

Cache604800s public

databooksauthoropenlibrarybiographyliteratureprofilewriter

API URLhttps://x402.hexl.dev/v1/data/author-profile

Integration docs

Example request

{
  "name": "Mary Shelley"
}

Example response

{
  "query": "Mary Shelley",
  "authorId": "OL25342A",
  "name": "Mary Shelley",
  "alternateNames": [
    "Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin",
    "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley",
    "Mary W. Shelley",
    "Mary Godwin Shelley",
    "mary shelley",
    "Shelley Mary"
  ],
  "birthDate": "30 August 1797",
  "deathDate": "1 February 1851",
  "status": "deceased",
  "workCount": 694,
  "topWork": "Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus",
  "topSubjects": [
    "Fiction",
    "Fiction, horror",
    "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)",
    "Monsters",
    "Frankenstein (fictitious character), fiction",
    "Scientists",
    "Children's fiction",
    "British and irish fiction (fictional works by one author)",
    "Horror stories",
    "English Authors"
  ],
  "bio": "Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. ([Source][1].) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Shel",
  "wikipedia": null,
  "matchesFound": 37,
  "url": "https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL25342A"
}

Input schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "required": [
    "name"
  ],
  "properties": {
    "name": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Author name to resolve."
    }
  }
}

Output schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "additionalProperties": true
}