Fourteen first ladies of the United States have written a total of twenty-four memoirs. The first lady is the hostess of the White House, and the position is traditionally filled by the wife of the president of the United States, with some historical exceptions. Every memoir by a first lady published in the 20th and 21st centuries has been a bestseller, at times outselling those of their presidential husbands..

In the early 1800s, Abigail Adams had her correspondence published as Letters of Mrs. Adams, the Wife of John Adams, and Louisa Adams "made several attempts at an autobiography", though she never sought to publish them. The Memoirs and Letters of Dolley Madison, Wife of James Madison, President of the United States were published in 1886 but were actually edited by Lucia Cutts and written by Dolley Madison's niece Mary Cutts.

Julia Grant was the first to write and attempt to publish her memoirs, writing The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant in the 1890s after the death of her husband Ulysses S. Grant. However, she never found a suitable publisher for them before her death in 1902, in part because she had unrealistic expectations of their value. The memoirs were eventually published in 1975. Helen Taft was the first to have memoirs published during her lifetime, in 1914. Memoirs by presidential spouses were uncommon until the 1970s; in the decades after Taft, only Edith Wilson, Grace Coolidge, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Lady Bird Johnson wrote and published their memoirs. Coolidge had her memoirs published in the 1930s as several articles in The American Magazine. Most first ladies have written and published at least one memoir about their life since Betty Ford's publication of her first memoir in the late 1970s.

Early published memoirs focused on relatively trivial matters, often largely focusing on the first lady's personal life. Helen Taft's memoirs were described by The New York Sun as "bright, witty, delightfully entertaining reminiscences" upon publication, and Edith Wilson's My Memoir was criticized by contemporary reviewers such as The New York Times for excessively focusing on clothing and social events. Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote four autobiographies, marked a shift in the content of the memoirs, writing more about political issues and less on her personal life. Lady Bird Johnson condensed a dictated two-million-word transcript into 300,000 for A White House Diary, which outsold her husband Lyndon B. Johnson's memoir. In the 1960s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was involved in editing two books by Molly Thayer, Jacqueline Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years.

Memoirs written by Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter and Barbara Bush also outsold the memoirs of their husbands. My Turn by Nancy Reagan, published in 1989, was nicknamed My Burn for its "vengeful" coverage of Reagan's life, particularly in the White House. The book sold very well, remaining on The New York Times Best Seller list for more than three months. Michelle Obama's memoir Becoming was published in 2018. She received over $60 million in advance of publication, and the book had sold over 11.5 million copies . Melania Trump published her memoir Melania in 2024, which debuted at number one on The New York Times Best Seller list in the nonfiction genre.

Memoirs Title First lady Publisher YearIdentifier Note Putnam Publishing Group 1975 Recollections of Full Years Dodd, Mead & Company 1914My Memoir Bobbs-Merrill Company 1939This is My Story Harper & Brothers 1937 This I Remember Harper & Brothers 1949 On My Own Harper & Brothers 1958 Harper & Brothers 1961 Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1970 Harper & Row 1978 Betty: A Glad Awakening Doubleday 1987 First Lady from Plains Houghton Mifflin 1984 Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life Random House 1987 Nancy: The Autobiography of America's First Lady HarperCollins 1980 My Turn Random House 1989 Barbara Bush: A Memoir Scribner 1994 Reflections: Life After the White House Scribner 2004 Living History Simon & Schuster 2003 Hard Choices Simon & Schuster 2014 What HappenedSimon & Schuster2017Spoken from the Heart Scribner 2010 BecomingMichelle ObamaCrown Publishing Group2018Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering MyselfFlatiron Books2019MelaniaSkyhorse Publishing2024View from the East WingGallery Books2026

See also List of American political memoirs List of autobiographies by presidents of the United States

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