Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Jonathan Troy | 1954 |
| The Brave Cowboy | 1956 |
| Fire on the Mountain | 1962 |
| Black Sun | 1971 |
| The Monkey Wrench Gang | 1975 |
| Good News | 1980 |
| The Fool’s Progress | 1988 |
| Hayduke Lives! | 1990 |
Publication Order of Poetry Collections
| Earth Apples: The Poetry of Edward Abbey | 1994 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness | 1968 |
| Appalachian Wilderness | 1970 |
| Slickrock | 1971 |
| Cactus Country | 1973 |
| The Journey Home | 1977 |
| The Hidden Canyon | 1977 |
| Abbey’s Road | 1979 |
| Desert Images | 1979 |
| Down the River | 1982 |
| Beyond the Wall | 1984 |
| One Life at a Time, Please | 1988 |
| A Voice Crying in the Wilderness: Notes from a Secret Journal | 1989 |
| Confessions of a Barbarian: Selections from the Journals of Edward Abbey, 1951-1989 | 1994 |
| Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast | 2006 |
About Edward Abbey
Edward Abbey (1927 to 1989) was an American novelist and essayist who wrote about the deserts of the American Southwest and argued for the protection of wilderness. His best-known books are the novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang” (1975) and the non-fiction work “Desert Solitaire” (1968).
Abbey was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on 29 January 1927. His mother was a schoolteacher and church organist, and his father’s anarchist and socialist views strongly influenced him. Eight months before his 18th birthday he travelled through the Southwest on foot, by bus, by hitchhiking and on freight trains, and the desert country of the Four Corners region stayed with him. After two years as a military policeman in Italy with the US Army, he studied at the University of New Mexico, taking a BA in 1951 and a master’s degree in philosophy in 1956, with a year at Edinburgh University as a Fulbright scholar in between.
His first novel, “Jonathan Troy”, was published in 1954. The second, “The Brave Cowboy” (1956), was filmed as “Lonely Are the Brave” (1962), with Kirk Douglas producing and starring and a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo. “Fire on the Mountain” (1962) became a television film in 1981.
In 1956 and 1957 Abbey worked as a seasonal ranger at Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah, maintaining trails, greeting visitors and collecting campground fees. The notes he kept there became “Desert Solitaire”, which describes the canyon country of south-eastern Utah and attacks what he called industrial tourism in the national parks. It has been compared to Thoreau’s “Walden”.
“The Monkey Wrench Gang”, whose characters set out to stop the construction of buildings and dams in wilderness areas, inspired environmentalists who were frustrated with mainstream groups, and its influence is often linked to the founding of Earth First! in 1980. Abbey never formally joined, though he occasionally wrote for the organisation. His essay collections include “The Journey Home” (1977), “Abbey’s Road” (1979) and “One Life at a Time, Please” (1988).
From 1984 he taught at the University of Arizona while working on the novel “The Fool’s Progress” (1988). He died at his home in Tucson on 14 March 1989, aged 62, and friends buried him at an undisclosed spot in the desert, as he had asked. A final novel, “Hayduke Lives!”, appeared in 1990.