Philip Pullman Books In Order

Publication Order of His Dark Materials Books

Publication Order of His Dark Materials Graphic Novels

Publication Order of Adventures Of John Blake Graphic Novels

Publication Order of Book Of Dust Books

Publication Order of Canongate Myths Books

Publication Order of New Cut Gang Books

Publication Order of Sally Lockhart Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Plays

Publication Order of Picture Books

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Point Horror Books

Publication Order of Shaun Tan Short Story Collections

Publication Order of Dramascripts Books

Publication Order of Red Hot Reads Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

About Philip Pullman:

Philip Pullman is a British author who is best known for his young adult novels, most of which can be classed under the genre of fantasy fiction. Although he is a prolific writer with a long line of published books to his name, his most famous works are Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass, which together comprise the His Dark Materials trilogy. Both critically and commercially successful, many of Philip Pullman’s novels have been adapted for television as well as the silver screen.

A Youth Spent in Travel

Philip Pullman was born on October 19, 1946 to Alfred O. Pullman, a Royal Air Force pilot, and his wife, Audrey Evelyn Pullman. While he was born in Norwich, England, he spent the first few years of his life travelling the world with his family, as his father was stationed to various posts. However, when Philip was barely seven years old, his father passed away in a plane crash while on active duty. His mother moved the family back to England, but soon remarried and took her son to Australia to start a new life.

As a child, Philip found himself fascinated by the world of comic book superheroes, and he would carry the moral lessons and grand narrative themes of good versus evil and cosmic battle into his own work. In 1957 Philip returned to the United Kingdom, where he continued his schooling in Gwynedd, Wales, although he spent a lot of time in Norfolk as well, under the care of his grandfather, who was a clergyman. The time he spent with his grandfather was pivotal to his later atheistic beliefs as well as the religious and moral themes that underlie his work.

University and the Academic Life

In 1963, Philip Pullman began his higher education at the prestigious Exeter College at Oxford University. However, despite his later success as a writer, he proved to be a mediocre student at best, barely graduating five years later with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Ironically enough, in later years Pullman reflected on his time as a student of English as not being very inspiring and clearly states that it was not an enjoyable experience for him.

In 1970, Philip Pullman married Judith Speller and settled down to life as a middle school teacher in North Oxford. While there, he wrote the first of many school plays and began work on his first published novel, The Haunted Storm. While it garnered him a coveted Young Writer’s Award, Pullman with his typical modesty refers to it as a poor effort, and for the most part shies away from discussing the novel.

Over the next several years, Pullman continued teaching at school and simultaneously worked on his plays and novels. He published a few more books over the next few years, most notably Galatea in 1976 and The Ruby in the Smoke, the first of his Sally Lockhart series, in 1986. With the publication and critical success of The Ruby in the Smoke, Philip Pullman became well-established as a writer of young adult fiction and was well on his way to becoming one of the most prodigious literary talents of our time.

Although he continued to teach, he gave up his permanent position as a middle school teacher in 1988 and took a position as a part-time instructor at Oxford’s Westminster College. While he continued to create plays for school children, he also began work on a series of more adult novels at this time, the first of which was published in 1995. Entitled The Northern Lights, it was the first book of his seminal trilogy, His Dark Materials and gained him critical acclaim as well as a number of literary awards, including the highly prestigious Carnegie Medal.

The Northern Lights

The Northern Lights is the first installment in the chronicles of a young English girl named Lyra Belacqua, who lives in a parallel universe dominated by the authority and tyranny of a body known as the Magesterium, which forms a theocracy that is single-mindedly devoted to the ruthless suppression of anything they deem to be heresy. It is a complicated world, in which humans lives with a disjointed soul that is embodied in the form of an animal companion, called a daemon. In this world, each human has a daemon of their own that accompanies them throughout their life – the daemon is an integral part of the human being it is attached to, and no human can survive detached from their daemon.

The plot centers on Lyra’s quest to find her Uncle Asriel, a scientist who has incurred the wrath of the Magesterium for pursuing his research into a substance he calls Dust. During a visit to his niece, he disappears mysteriously through a portal into a parallel universe. Around the same time, Lyra’s best friend Roger disappears as well and the young heroine is convinced that his disappearance is connected to the activities of a shadow group called the Gobblers. Determined to find her friend and her uncle, Lyra embarks on a quest to save them, aided by her daemon and an alethiometer, a four-sided compass which points her unerringly to the truth.

Over the course of a series of adventures, Lyra finds her uncle, only to discover that he is really her father and that his purpose all along was to use Roger to his advantage. In the final act of the novel, Lord Asriel severs Roger from his daemon and the resultant violent energy causes a massive explosion to rip through time and space, opening the door for Asriel to enter the parallel universe he has been searching for. As he enters the portal, he vows to find the Dust and destroy it. However, Lyra knows now that her father cannot be trusted, and suspecting that the Dust is worth protecting, she enters the void along with her daemon to stop her father from carrying out his plans.

Published in America as The Golden Compass, The Northern Lights was adapted into a major Hollywood motion picture in 2007, starring such heavyweights as Nicole Kidman and Ian McKellan. However, box office reviews were mixed and any plans to adapt the remaining works in the series into movies have been put on hold indefinitely.

The Subtle Knife

The Subtle Knife is the second in the His Dark Materials trilogy and continues the story of Lyra Belacqua’s adventures. The story continues to revolve around Lyra’s attempts to find and stop her father, this time with the aid of a young boy named Will Parry, who accidentally fell through the door into Lyra’s parallel universe. Lyra and Will join forces to find Will’s father, later revealed to be the mysterious adventurer Stanislaus Grumman, and stop Lord Asriel. However, they face a serious threat from the council of witches who have banded together under the command of Lyra’s mother, Mrs. Coulter, in order to support the cause of the evil Lord Asriel. Matters are further complicated by the discovery of a knife, which when wielded by its true guardian can protect people from the evil Spectres, which prey on the souls of people in this parallel universe. Will finds that he is the true guardian of the knife and the young protagonists struggle to keep this vitally valuable weapon from Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter. As the book winds to a close, Lyra disappears, leaving behind her prized alethiometer. Determined to find her, Will continues on his journey, temporarily abandoning his quest for Lord Asriel.

Criticism and Atheism

Like most of his works, the His Dark Materials trilogy has received rave reviews and a great deal of critical acclaim. However, Pullman’s blatantly anti-theistic views have caused more religiously conservative readers to criticize his work somewhat harshly. An avowed atheist and philosopher, Pullman takes these criticisms in stride, arguing that his goal is to present a new interpretation of the typical religious duality, presenting the world in shades of grey where morality is really in the eye of the beholder.