Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis : A Biography (ISBN 088064172X)

Necessary for any serious student of Hermann Hesse:
Ralph Freedman ranks with Joseph Mileck, Theodore Ziokowski, and Mark Boulby in his importance to Hesse scholarship. Freedman previously published an important study comparing the fiction of Virginia Woolf, Andre Gide, and Hesse. This biography is a standard against which any future biographies are likely to be judged, composed by a man who has studied the author for many years.

One of the best biographies I have read, ever:
This book is not only a very thorough biography of Hermann Hesse. It is also one of the best biographies I have ever read. Among other things, it does a very impressive job of blending Hesse's life and work, explaining how precise parts of a given book were influenced with events in his life, and so on. I do wish all biographies were as well researched, and as well written, as this one.