And anyhow, I cordially dislike most critical essay-writing of this type. I'm no academic, so whatever I have to say is bound to be marked by that. But I love to be proved wrong: works like Shippey's Author of the Century, Flieger's Splintered Light, Olsen's Exploring The Hobbit, Anderson's Annotated Hobbit, and Tolkien's own critical tours de force, The Monsters and the Critics and On Fairy-stories, have all been truly illuminating. In trying to broaden my knowledge and sharpen my critical acumen, I've begun reading some of the Barfield which Flieger recommends and draws upon for her argument, as well as giants in the field of criticism, such as Morrison's Playing in the Dark, Auerbach's Mimesis, and Frye's Anatomy.
At any rate, I still mean to write out a more coherent and thorough review of the Lenz/Scott book. So that's what I'll do over the next few posts!
As I continue to read through more scholarly/academic and other fannish/mercenary secondary literature that's out there about Pullman, I also stand by my call for help. If you've read any of it and have some thoughts, let me know. If you have, it's probably because you've cited it in a paper, so send that to me, too, while you're at it. There could be a scholarship in it for you!
Mercifully, there are several existing bibliographies of Philip Pullman:
There's the one in the back of Laurie Frost's The Elements of His Dark Materials (and the author's preferred 2006 edition, The Definitive Guide)
And at the end of HDM Illuminated, edited by Millicent Lenz and Carole Scott
Online at isfdb, orderofbooks, and LibraryThing (helpfully pointing to many of his introductions, afterwords, etc.)
And at BridgeToTheStars.net
Douglas Anderson's Wormwoodiana (just one entry when I checked, but still impressive)
To sum up, the publication order for first editions of Pullman's works seems to run as follows, with selected adaptations, duplications, etc. briefly noted:
Early Novels (1970's)
Having completed his studies, married (1970) and started a family, Pullman begins his publishing career with a pair of hard-to-find, at times hard-to-read literary novels.
1972 - The Haunted Storm
1978 - Galatea
Writing and Teaching (1978-1995)
According to Cengage Encyclopedia, Pullman teaches at the middle school (1970-86) and university level (1986-95). Featuring the not-to-be-overlooked Sally Lockhart books and valuable autobiographical sketch "I have a feeling this all belongs to me," by the tail end of these years Pullman is wrapping up his teaching career and turning his full attention towards an ambitious story inspired by Paradise Lost.
1978 - Using the Oxford Junior Dictionary
1979 - Ancient Civilizations
1982 - Count Karlstein, or the Ride of the Demon Huntsman (rewritten from earlier school play script)
1985 - The Three Musketeers (unpublished play performed at Polka Children's Theatre)
1985 - The Ruby in the Smoke (TV adaptation feat. Billie Piper and Matt Smith! '06 )
1986 - The Shadow in the Plate (...North US '88)
1987 - How to Be Cool (TV adaptation in '88; here's ep 3)
1989 - Spring-Heeled Jack
1990 - The Broken Bridge
1990 - Frankenstein (from a play at Polka Children's Theatre)
1990 - The Tiger in the Well
1992 - The White Mercedes (reprinted as The Butterfly Tattoo in '98)
1993 - Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Limehouse Horror (from a play at Polka Children's Theatre)
1993 - Aladdin
April 1993 - "I have a feeling this all belongs to me" (autobiographical sketch for Something About the Author, vol. 65)
1994 - The Tin Princess
1994 - Thunderbolt's Waxwork
1995 - The Gas Fitters' Bal1 (reprinted in The Adventures of the New Cut Gang '11 and together with its predecessor in Two Crafty Criminals! '12)
Master Storyteller (1995-2025), comprising the period between His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust. Pullman achieves notoriety, accolades, and scholarly notice; but note too just how much else he's published over these years, from Clockwork, his "most perfectly constructed story," and companion stories about Lyra's world, to his fairy tales and collected nonfiction--a remarkable, diverse, and as yet little studied body of work.
7/9/95 - Northern Lights (UK)
9/2/95 - The Firework-Maker's Daughter (rewritten from earlier school play script)
4/16/96 - The Golden Compass (US; film adaptation 2007; HBO/BBC series 2019 incorporating material from companion books and LBS; audiobooks narrated by Pullman and full cast '03 and by Ruth Wilson '24; various stage and radio plays including at the Royal National Theatre '03-'05 and BBC 4 '03; the video game released '07 on various platforms contains footage subsequently cut from the film)
11/15/96 - Clockwork, or All Wound Up
7/22/97 - The Subtle Knife (HBO/BBC series 2020)
1998 - Mossycoat (included in Magic Beans: A Handful of Fairytales from the Storybag '11)
1998 - Detective Stories (anthology with preface and introductions; reprinted as Whodunit? '07)
4/1/99 - I Was a Rat! or The Scarlet Slippers
10/10/00 - The Amber Spyglass (HBO/BBC series 2022)
2000 - Puss in Boots (from a play)
10/28/03 - Lyra's Oxford
9/4/04 - The Scarecrow and His Servant
2005 - Lantern Slides (included in HDM 10th Anniversary ed.)
4/3/08 - Once Upon a Time in the North
12/4/09 - The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
8/9/12 - Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version
2014 - The Golden Compass Graphic Novel (Fr.; En. trans. Annie Eaton 2015)
12/10/14 - The Collectors (audio only; print 2022)
5/30/17 - The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship
10/19/17 - La Belle Sauvage
2017-18 - Daemon Voices (ed. Simon Mason, anthologizing pieces written at various times)
10/3/19 - The Secret Commonwealth
10/15/20 - Serpentine (written c. '04 to be sold at auction fundraiser)
2/22/22 - The Subtle Knife Graphic Novel
4/28/22 - The Imagination Chamber (standalone reprint of Lantern Slides)
10/23/25 - The Rose Field
2025-? What else? Presumably more graphic novels. Perhaps the promised "little green book" about Will? More memoirs? Time will tell. I'm hoping for collections of letters, tweets, and interviews, and the discovery of unpublished notes and drafts...
So that's a start. As for the Lyra stories' internal chronology...whew. Still working that out! Meanwhile, I'll also keep advocating what I see as the more important task, the labor of love: close reading of his work, and of relevant primary sources. For that list, see the course page.
In the spirit of completionism, here are editions of books with prefaces, introductions, and so on contributed by Pullman. Many are collected in Daemon Voices.
2004 NYRB: Lindsay, The Magic Pudding
2005 Folio Society: Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy
2008 OUP: Milton, Paradise Lost
For interviews and writing about Pullman, from the scholarly to the hack, see the continued bibliographies here.
Please help me out and point out any errors or omissions.
I am the author of one of the books mentioned here, Elements, a book which I am glad to see is no longer readily available. It was hacked at in the final stages and never properly proofread. Scholastic UK brought out a much cleaner edition in 2006, The Definitive Guide, and although I suppose it is technically OP (OP [out of print] is problematical now there are e-books), there has been some discussion of reprinting the book.
ReplyDeleteI was fortunate during the writing of my book that there was no full length study available. It was in any event not my intention to provide an overview of the literature or an interpretation. While I consider it apparent Paradise Lost influenced Pullman (and the Bible and Greco-Roman mythology influenced it), I think to concentrate on an aspect like that puts one in the position of the plowman in Bruegel's "Fall of Icarus," so intent on the next step in furrowing his row, that he misses altogether the descent of the winged boy into the sea below.
My preferred approach is to look at art as what comes between: there is a writer and there is a reader and what matters is what they make between them.
Excellent! I appreciate hearing from you on here; I'll add the link to the Scholastic UK edition and see about getting a copy.
ReplyDeletePullman expresses a similar approach, I think, his Reading in the Borderland talk being a good example: "The borderland, the land along the frontier, is the space that opens up between the private mind of the reader and the book they're reading." Makes sense to me!