Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Catcher in the Rye | 1951 |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
| Franny and Zooey | 1961 |
| Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction | 1963 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Nine Stories / For Esmé - with Love and Squalor, and Other Stories | 1953 |
| Three Early Stories | 2014 |
About J. D. Salinger
J. D. Salinger (1919 to 2010) was an American writer best known for his 1951 novel “The Catcher in the Rye”. He published one novel and three further books of short fiction, among them “Nine Stories” and “Franny and Zooey”, before withdrawing from public life. His last published work appeared in 1965.
Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan on 1 January 1919. He graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy in 1936 and attended New York University and Ursinus College without finishing a degree. In 1939 he took a writing class at Columbia University taught by Whit Burnett, the editor of Story magazine, which published his first story, “The Young Folks”, in 1940.
Salinger was drafted into the US Army in 1942 and served in counterintelligence with the 12th Infantry Regiment. He was at Utah Beach on D-Day, in the Battle of Hürtgen Forest and in the Battle of the Bulge, and in April 1945 he entered the Kaufering IV concentration camp. After Germany’s defeat he was hospitalised for combat stress. In 1948 The New Yorker published “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”, and the magazine went on to carry much of his later work.
“The Catcher in the Rye” was published by Little, Brown on 16 July 1951. It follows 17-year-old Holden Caulfield through New York City after he leaves his preparatory school, and it was an immediate popular success. Holden had first appeared in the story “Slight Rebellion off Madison”, accepted by The New Yorker in 1941 and printed in 1946. Salinger said the novel was “sort of” autobiographical.
“Nine Stories” followed in 1953 and is published in many countries as “For Esmé - with Love and Squalor, and Other Stories”. “Franny and Zooey” (1961) and “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction” (1963) collect four long stories, all first printed in The New Yorker between 1955 and 1959. His final publication, the novella “Hapworth 16, 1924”, filled most of the magazine’s issue of 19 June 1965 and has not been issued as a book.
Salinger lived in Cornish, New Hampshire, where he died on 27 January 2010, aged 91. “Three Early Stories”, a collection of work from 1940 and 1944, was published in 2014. He continued to write throughout his life, and his widow and his son Matt have said that all of the unpublished material will eventually be published. No publication date has been announced.
Photo: Lotte Jacobi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).