Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Welcome to Hard Times | 1960 |
| Big as Life | 1966 |
| The Book of Daniel | 1971 |
| Ragtime | 1975 |
| Loon Lake | 1980 |
| World’s Fair | 1985 |
| Billy Bathgate | 1989 |
| The Waterworks | 1994 |
| City of God | 2000 |
| The March | 2005 |
| Homer & Langley | 2009 |
| Andrew’s Brain | 2014 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Lives of the Poets: Six Stories and a Novella | 1984 |
| Sweet Land Stories | 2004 |
| All the Time in the World: New and Selected Stories | 2011 |
Publication Order of Plays
| Drinks Before Dinner | 1979 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| American Anthem (With: J. C. Suares) | 1982 |
| Jack London, Hemingway, and the Constitution: Selected Essays, 1977-1992 / Poets and Presidents | 1993 |
| Reporting the Universe | 2003 |
| Creationists: Selected Essays, 1993-2006 | 2006 |
| Citizen Doctorow: Notes on Art & Politics | 2015 |
About E. L. Doctorow
E. L. Doctorow (1931 to 2015) was an American novelist, editor and professor known for historical fiction that sets invented characters beside real figures from the American past. He wrote twelve novels, among them “Ragtime” (1975), “Billy Bathgate” (1989) and “The March” (2005), along with three volumes of short fiction and a stage play.
Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born in the Bronx, New York, on 6 January 1931, to second-generation Americans of Russian Jewish descent who named him after Edgar Allan Poe. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and studied philosophy at Kenyon College, graduating in 1952. After a year of graduate work in English drama at Columbia University he was drafted, and served with the Army Signal Corps in West Germany in 1954 and 1955.
Back in New York he worked as a reader for a film company, and the many Westerns he read there prompted his first novel, “Welcome to Hard Times” (1960). He spent nine years as a book editor, first at New American Library and then, from 1964 to 1969, as editor in chief of The Dial Press. He left publishing in 1969 and completed “The Book of Daniel” (1971), a fictional treatment of the trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, while a visiting writer at the University of California, Irvine.
“Ragtime” (1975) won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was later placed on the Modern Library list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. “World’s Fair” (1985) won the National Book Award. “Billy Bathgate” and “The March” each took both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award.
Several of his books were filmed, including “Welcome to Hard Times” (1967), “Daniel” (1983), “Ragtime” (1981) and “Billy Bathgate” (1991). The 1998 Broadway musical of “Ragtime” won four Tony Awards, and two short stories became the films “Jolene” (2008) and “Wakefield” (2016).
Doctorow held a professorship in English and American Letters at New York University and received the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction in 2014, the year his last novel, “Andrew’s Brain”, was published. He died of lung cancer in Manhattan on 21 July 2015, aged 84.
Photo: Earl McDonald, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).