Matthew Pearl Books In Order

Publication Order of The Dante Club Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

Matthew Pearl is a New York Times bestselling author of the “Dante Club” series of novels. He is the editor of the Modern Library reissues of “Dante’s Inferno” for the modern era and also “The Murder in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allen Poe. His debut novel “The Dante Club” has been published in more than forty countries and thirty languages across the world. His other novels such as “The Last Bookaneer” and “The Poe Shadow” have been just as popular. They all feature brilliant crime narratives people with fascinating real life historical figures which have earned him a reputation among readers across the world. “The Dante Chamber” which is the second novel of the series is set five years following a series of killings in Boston believed to have been inspired by Dante. The Dante series of novels are riveting adventures set across London that showcase the excellence of one of the best writers in the genre. Matthew Pearl graduated from Yale Law School and Harvard University and has been a professor of literature at Emerson College and Harvard. He currently makes his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Pearl is an enfant terrible straddling the American literature landscape as evidenced by how well his Dante club work has done. A few weeks following its publication, it had become a New York Times bestselling title rising as high as eleventh. The novel is based on a real club that went by that name that used to meet in nineteenth century Cambridge Massachusetts to study and translate the works of Dante Alighieri, the Italian poet. The club had some illustrious names that included the likes of Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., the poets James Russell Lowell and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and JT Fields the publisher. Matthew Pearl first got interested in the poet when he took a class on Dante while he was at Harvard University studying for his undergraduate degree. Pearl was then studying American and English literature but was so fascinated with Dante that for a time he considered changing his major to take Romance Languages. But such a radical step would have meant that he would not graduate in the time frame he desired. Instead Lino Pertile his professor suggested that he write his thesis on the “Dante Club.” His work was so good that the Dante Society of America awarded him the Dante Prize for his efforts.

After Matthew Pearl graduated summa cum laude from Harvard, he attended Law School at Yale where he studied intellectual property law. At Yale, his fascination with Dante kept coming back and halfway through his course he started writing a novel inspired by the “Dante Club.” He wrote about its founding the members, its modern iteration and what it was doing. Some of things he wrote about were how it helped Longfellow come up with the debut translation of “Dante’s Divine Comedy.” Pearl’s work was the background for a murder mystery in which the punishment methods were inspired by what Dante wrote were what awaited sinner in “The Inferno.” Since they were the most familiar with the work, it was the members of the Club at the time that had the difficult task of finding the killer. Pearl uses comic relief by laughing at the idea that some scholars could investigate and resolve some gruesome homicides. Pearl has said that in his writing of the novel he intended to recreate the most extraordinary components of Dante. He wanted the “Dante Club” to go through a journey of confronting evil and violence.

Matthew Pearl’s “The Dante Club” is set in Boston In 1865. The Dante Club is made up of literary geniuses that include Harvard professors and poets James Russell Lowell, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow alongside JT Fields the publisher. The members have been working on the translation of “The Divine Comedy” by Dante and intend to unveil their work in the “New World.” But there are powerful Brahmins at Harvard that are determined to ensure Dante remains obscure. They believe that his works will result in the infiltration of foreign superstitions into the minds of Americans. For them, this is just as bad and as corrupting as allowing immigrants in at the Boston Harbor. The Dante Club is fighting to keep a sacred cause alive but when a series of murders are reported in Cambridge and Boston, their plans fall into disarray. But only the members know that the killer is modeling his homicides on Dante Inferno’s punishments in Hell. The future of the literary work of Dante is at stake alongside that of the elite of Boston and it is up to the Dante Club to resolve the mystery before the authorities realize. Nicholas Rey an outcast police officer teams up with Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes to investigate and in the process they put their careers on the line. They soon learn that the murderous maniac may be closer to home than they had ever imagined.

“The Dante Chamber” the second novel of the “Dante Club” series is set in the year 1870 where Boston had been beset by a series of Dante inspired killings, But then someone is found murdered and an enormous stone hung around his neck with writing from “The Divine Comedy.” Soon after, there are several more mysterious homicides in a similar style and Christina Rossetti the poet fears that her brother Gabriel Rossetti who is a writer obsessed with Dante could find himself the next victim. Christina asks poets Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning together with Dr. Oliver Wendell the famous scholar to help find the next clues. Together, the motley crew of investigators rushes to find the secrets in the verse to stop the killings and find Gabriel who has gone missing. They work the worlds between the dark corners of the London underworld and beautiful and imposing mansions of the elite as they try to unravel a befuddling mystery. But they realize the deranged maniac has even more horrific plans when they learn of his true inspiration. It is a thrilling tale of intrigue that combines fiction and fact to make for an enthralling and captivating story.