Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Dangling Man | 1944 |
| The Victim | 1947 |
| The Adventures of Augie March | 1953 |
| Seize the Day | 1956 |
| Henderson the Rain King | 1959 |
| Herzog | 1964 |
| Mr. Sammler’s Planet | 1970 |
| Humboldt’s Gift | 1975 |
| The Dean’s December | 1982 |
| More Die of Heartbreak | 1987 |
| Ravelstein | 2000 |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
| A Theft | 1989 |
| The Bellarosa Connection | 1989 |
| The Actual | 1997 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| Mosby’s Memoirs and Other Stories | 1968 |
| Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories | 1984 |
| Something to Remember Me By: Three Tales | 1991 |
| Collected Stories | 2001 |
Publication Order of Plays
| The Last Analysis | 1965 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| To Jerusalem and Back | 1976 |
| It All Adds Up | 1994 |
| Saul Bellow: Letters | 2010 |
| There Is Simply Too Much to Think About | 2015 |
About Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (1915 to 2005) was a Canadian-born American novelist whose books include “The Adventures of Augie March”, “Herzog” and “Humboldt’s Gift”. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize in 1976 and is the only writer to have won the National Book Award for Fiction three times.
He was born Solomon Bellows in Lachine, Quebec, two years after his parents emigrated from Saint Petersburg. The family was Lithuanian-Jewish, and when he was nine they moved to the Humboldt Park district of Chicago, the city that became the setting for much of his fiction. He studied at the University of Chicago, graduated from Northwestern University with honours in anthropology and sociology, and in the 1930s worked for the Chicago branch of the Federal Writers’ Project. He became a naturalised US citizen in 1941.
Bellow finished his first novel, “Dangling Man” (1944), while serving in the merchant marine during the Second World War. It follows a young Chicago man waiting to be drafted. A Guggenheim Fellowship in 1948 took him to Paris, where he began “The Adventures of Augie March” (1953), a picaresque novel that established his reputation and won his first National Book Award.
In 1962 he returned to Chicago as a professor on the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, where he taught for more than 30 years. “Herzog” (1964), about a troubled middle-aged professor who writes letters he never sends, was an unexpected bestseller and won a second National Book Award. “Mr. Sammler’s Planet” (1970) brought a third. The title character of “Humboldt’s Gift” (1975), which won the Pulitzer Prize, was modelled on his late friend the poet Delmore Schwartz.
His later books include “The Dean’s December”, “More Die of Heartbreak” and several novellas. He received the National Medal of Arts in 1988 and the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990. His final novel, “Ravelstein” (2000), draws on his friendship with the philosopher Allan Bloom.
Bellow was married five times and had four children. He moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1993 to teach at Boston University, and died there on 5 April 2005, aged 89. A volume of his letters appeared in 2010 and his collected non-fiction, “There Is Simply Too Much to Think About”, in 2015.
Photo: Jeff Lowenthal, published by Viking Press, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).