Ann Petry Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Ann Petry was a published American author born October 12, 1908 who passed away April 28, 1997. She was the first black woman to have book sales that went over a million copies thanks to her novel, The Street.

She wanted to be a professional writer for the first time in high school. That is when her English essay read her essay out loud to the class for everyone to hear, commenting that she believed that Ann could be a writer if she wanted to be.

The choice to become a pharmacist was her family’s. She graduated from Connecticut College of Pharmacy in New Haven in 1931 with her degree. For several years, she worked as part of the family business. She also started writing her own short stories while working at the pharmacy.

Ann got married on February 22, 1938 to George D. Petry from Louisianan which brought her to New York. She wrote articles for newspapers like The Amsterdam News or The People’s Voice. She also published her short stories in The Crisis and worked at an after-school program in Harlem. During this time in her life she had gone through what most of the black population in the country was enduring in their everyday life.

Moving over the streets of Harlem, living among poor black people in large number for the first time, and seeing neglected children left impressions on Petry from New York. Impacted by her experiences form Harlem, she used her skills when it comes to creative writing to bring it to paper. Her daughter explained to the Post that writing the book was her way of dealing with the problem.

Her book The Street came out in 1946, winning the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. Book sales of the book topped a million copies and kept on selling.

Ann was born in 1947 in Old Saybrook. She worked on various books such as Country Place and The Narrows, as well as other stories and books for kids, but never got the same success that her first book did.

Up until she died, the author lived in an eighteenth century house in her hometown of Old Saybrook. The novel is set in what comes after World War II, but despite this, she picked the 1938 New England hurricane as her source for this storm at the center of the narrative. The author was outlived by her husband who passed in 2000 (George Petry), and survived by her daughter Liz Petry.

The Street is a 1946 book by Ann Petry. This is the story of Lutie Johnson, a younger black woman, and the struggle that she took on to raise her son in the middle of all of the poverty, violence, and racial dissonance that existed in Harlem in the late forties.

The critics thought this was a master work when it came out. The Street sold so many copies and the first novel hit over a million in print, proving its popularity and importance all these years later. Check it out for yourself and see what you think!

Country Place is a 1947 novel by Ann Petry. This is a writer who brought readers The Street and now continues on to a story that depicts a small and sleepy town in New England that is contending with all of the lies and indignities of American life.

Johnnie Roane came back after fighting for four years in World War II to be with his loving parents and Gloria, his beautiful wife. But he gets doubts over whether Gloria was loyal to him that come up on the way home thanks to the local taxi driver, gossip, and doubts which are growing as the hurricane that is coming towards them starts to darken Lennox, Connecticut, a town that seems perfect.

But more than that, a violence is waiting beneath the storm’s surface. Country Place is a novel that will have you turning the pages to find out what happens. It is able to capture how small town life in America is transformed thanks to one of the best writers of the twentieth century. Read it for yourself and see what you think!