Philip Pullman is an English novelist best known for “His Dark Materials”, the fantasy trilogy that began with “Northern Lights” in 1995, and for its companion trilogy “The Book of Dust”, completed with “The Rose Field” in October 2025. He was knighted in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to literature.
Pullman was born in Norwich on 19 October 1946. His father, an RAF pilot, was killed in a plane crash in Kenya in 1954, and after his mother remarried the family moved to North Wales, with a spell of about 18 months in South Australia. He studied English at Exeter College, Oxford, graduating in 1968, and from 1970 taught at a middle school in Oxford, where he also wrote school plays.
His first novel, “The Haunted Storm”, appeared in 1972, and the school plays led to his first children’s book, “Count Karlstein” (1982). “The Ruby in the Smoke” (1985) opened the Sally Lockhart quartet of Victorian mysteries; the BBC adapted the first two books for television in 2006 and 2007, with Billie Piper starring in “The Ruby in the Smoke”. He taught part-time at Westminster College, Oxford, until 1996, when he began writing full time.
“His Dark Materials” opens in a parallel universe where people’s souls take the form of animals called daemons, and follows Lyra Belacqua, a girl growing up at Jordan College, Oxford. Will Parry, a boy from our own universe, joins the story in “The Subtle Knife”. The title comes from Milton’s “Paradise Lost”. “Northern Lights” (published as “The Golden Compass” in North America) won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, and “The Amber Spyglass” was the first children’s book to win the Whitbread Book of the Year. The trilogy was staged by the National Theatre in 2003, filmed as “The Golden Compass” in 2007 and adapted for television by the BBC and HBO between 2019 and 2022.
“The Book of Dust” consists of “La Belle Sauvage” (2017), “The Secret Commonwealth” (2019) and “The Rose Field” (2025), which is the final book about Lyra. Pullman has described the trilogy as neither sequel nor prequel but an “equel”. Shorter companion books include “Lyra’s Oxford”, “Once Upon a Time in the North” and “Serpentine”.
His other work includes the fairy tales “The Firework-Maker’s Daughter” and “Clockwork”, a retelling of fifty of the Grimms’ stories, the novella “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ” (2010) and the essay collection “Daemon Voices” (2017). He won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2005.
Publication Order of His Dark Materials Books
Northern Lights / The Golden Compass
1995
The Subtle Knife
1997
The Amber Spyglass
2000
Publication Order of The Book of Dust Books
La Belle Sauvage
2017
The Secret Commonwealth
2019
The Rose Field
2025
Publication Order of His Dark Materials Companion Books
Lyra’s Oxford
2003
Once Upon a Time in the North
2008
The Collectors
2014
Serpentine
2020
The Imagination Chamber
2022
Publication Order of Sally Lockhart Books
The Ruby in the Smoke
1985
The Shadow in the Plate / The Shadow in the North
1986
The Tiger in the Well
1990
The Tin Princess
1994
Publication Order of The New-Cut Gang Books
Thunderbolt’s Waxwork
1994
The Gas-Fitters’ Ball
1995
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
The Haunted Storm
1972
Galatea
1976
Count Karlstein
1982
How to Be Cool
1987
Spring-Heeled Jack
1989
The Broken Bridge
1990
The White Mercedes / The Butterfly Tattoo
1992
The Firework-Maker’s Daughter
1995
Clockwork, or All Wound Up
1996
I Was a Rat! or The Scarlet Slippers
1999
The Scarecrow and His Servant
2004
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
2010
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
Grimm Tales for Young and Old / Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm
2012
Publication Order of Children’s Books
The Wonderful Story of Aladdin and the Enchanted Lamp
1993
Mossycoat
1998
Puss in Boots: The Adventures of That Most Enterprising Feline
2000
Publication Order of Graphic Novels
The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship
