Erica Jong Books In Order

Publication Order of Isadora Wing Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Picture Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Erica Jong is an essayist, poet, and novelist who is best known for using her creativity to help drive rational and powerful feminist consciousness. She started out in 1971 and is still writing, which means she has a huge collection of novels that include six non-fiction works, six poetry collections, eight novels and several articles featured in newspapers and magazines such as New York Times Book Review, the New York Times, Vogue, the Sunday Times of London, Vogue and Elle among others. She has won several awards for her work in promoting female consciousness including the Excellence in Literature United Nations Award. Her fiction works have been popular all over the globe and are read by audiences in Europe, the United States, China, Japan, and other Asian countries.

As a teenager, Erica went to Benard College and then proceeded to study for her masters at Columbia University, where she graduated with a degree in English literature. She was also an attendee at the graduate writing program at Columbia and studied with Mark Strand and Stanley Kunitz. In 2007, the Columbia University purchased a large collection of her works under its Rare Book and Manuscripts Library. The collections can now be easily accessed by the university’s undergraduate and graduate students studying creative writing. On her part, Erica has expressed interest in one day becoming a tutor on Columbia while advising on the use of her works in the school archives. While it is her ultimate dream to teach at Columbia, she loves to refer to herself as a defrocked academic. Places where she has taught include Bennington College in the United States, Ben Gurion University in Israel, the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference and several prestigious universities and writing programs in the US. Jong loves to lecture and teach though she has asserted that this often gets in the way of her writing. Nonetheless, she loves imparting literary knowledge, which she believes is just as important as entertaining and informing her audiences.

Erica Jong’s debut novel “Fear of Flying” sold more than 26 million copies. The novel was translated into more than forty languages and was wildly popular in the United States Canada, Europe, and as far afield as Japan and China. The lead protagonist of her most popular series Isadora Wing is a woman who has to deal with a society that clings to outdated norms about marriage, love, and sex. Isadora plays a significant role in the series as her mindset changes and evolves over time, and she becomes more independent. Erica also wrote several single standing historical novels starting with “Fanny” in 1980 which showcased her mastery of British literature from the eighteenth century, ancient Greek lyric, and Shakespearean verse. She has also written a memoir about her life as an author that came out in 2006 titled “Seducing the Demon.” The memoir was a bestselling title in the United States and she followed it up with an anthology of women that wrote about sex titled “Sugar in My Bowl.” Jong’s novels answer many of the conflicts that women in the 1970s and 60s had to deal with including issues of love, femininity, womanhood, and the quest for purpose and freedom.

“Fear of Flying” by Erica Jong introduces twenty-nine-year-old Isadora Wing, a woman that recently published her debut volume of erotic poetry. At the start of the novel, she is traveling to a seminar of psychotherapists in Vienna alongside her American Chinese psychoanalyst husband. Sexually bored and emotionally frustrated in her marriage, she is tormented by an urge for creativity, adventure, freedom, and sexual rapture, and the need for the protection and security of a husband. In the meantime, she decides that an adventure across Europe would be best in the circumstances. Isadora takes off on a buzzed and feverish beer road trip on a convertible sports car. Beside her is a Jungian analyst that made her acquaintance at a recent seminar. A fortnight later, she is dumped as the boyfriend announces that he intends to join his girlfriend and his children who are going on a vacation in Brittany. It came as a complete shock to her and for a day, she feels as if everything is falling apart though she manages to pull herself together and find the strength and confidence she needed. She decides that she should head to London where she had planned a rendezvous with her husband before flying back home to New York.

“How to Save Your Own Life” by Erica Jong opens to Isadora still in a debilitating and loveless marriage though she is now a famous author. While there is not much flavor to her marriage, the sex is at least decent though she had recently learned that her husband Bennett had been cheating on her for a long time. Even before she had begun seeing other men and sleeping with them, her husband had beaten her to it and she hates him for it. She regrets staying with him for all those years and how much of a fool she had been. Before then, she had felt a tinge of regret for sleeping around but when she discovered he had been unfaithful for longer she started thinking her zipless fucks were nothing. Her discovery showed that her husband shared more than a bed with another woman as he offered her the sentimentality and emotion she never could get out of him. Preaching womanhood, the novels say that a woman has the right of getting lost in her identity rather than in her husband’s shadow.

Erica Jong’s “Parachutes & Kisses” continues the story of divorced and married again Isadora Wing. She is now a single parent with an irritating ex-husband, adorable daughter, and a huge assortment of interested men. There is the son of a popular therapist, an unorthodox rabbi, a handsome young man named Berkeley Sproul, and a disc jockey. She favors Berkeley the man who is fourteen years her junior that she had met at the spa. As expected, their affair is sexy but torturous that she does not know if it is love. Maybe the young man just wants to freeload on a trip to Venice.