Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| Other Voices, Other Rooms | 1948 |
| The Grass Harp | 1951 |
| Answered Prayers | 1986 |
| Summer Crossing | 2005 |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
| A Christmas Memory | 1956 |
| Breakfast at Tiffany’s | 1958 |
| The Thanksgiving Visitor | 1967 |
| One Christmas | 1982 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| A Tree of Night and Other Stories | 1949 |
| Music for Chameleons | 1980 |
| The Complete Stories of Truman Capote | 2004 |
| The Early Stories of Truman Capote | 2015 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| Local Color | 1950 |
| The Muses Are Heard | 1956 |
| Observations (With: Richard Avedon) | 1959 |
| In Cold Blood | 1966 |
| The Dogs Bark | 1973 |
| A House on the Heights | 2002 |
| Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote | 2004 |
| Portraits and Observations | 2007 |
About Truman Capote
Truman Capote (1924 to 1984) was an American novelist, short story writer and screenwriter, best known for the novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1958) and the true crime book “In Cold Blood”. He is regarded as one of the founders of New Journalism, and his work and life have been the subject of more than 20 films and television productions.
He was born Truman Streckfus Persons in New Orleans and, after his parents’ divorce, was raised for several years by his mother’s relatives in Monroeville, Alabama, where Harper Lee was a neighbour and friend. He moved to New York City in 1932 to live with his mother and her second husband, José García Capote. His formal education ended in 1942, when he was working as a copy boy at “The New Yorker”.
Capote began his career with short stories. The success of “Miriam”, published in “Mademoiselle” in 1945, brought him a contract with Random House, and his first novel, “Other Voices, Other Rooms”, followed in 1948. It is a semi-autobiographical story about a boy sent to live with his father in a decaying mansion in rural Alabama. A story collection, “A Tree of Night”, and a second novel, “The Grass Harp”, came next. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” introduced Holly Golightly, played by Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film.
“In Cold Blood” grew out of a short newspaper report on the 1959 murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. Capote travelled there with Harper Lee and spent six years on the book, which he called a “nonfiction novel”. It was serialised in “The New Yorker” and published by Random House in 1966, became an international bestseller and was filmed by Richard Brooks in 1967.
He never completed another novel. Chapters of the long-planned “Answered Prayers” appeared in “Esquire” in 1975 and 1976, and “La Côte Basque 1965” cost him many of his society friends. “Music for Chameleons”, a collection mixing fiction and non-fiction, was published in 1980. Capote died in Los Angeles on 25 August 1984. “Answered Prayers” was published unfinished in 1986, and his early novel “Summer Crossing”, long thought destroyed, appeared in 2005. “The Early Stories of Truman Capote” (2015) collects 14 stories written in his teens.
Photo: Roger Higgins, New York World-Telegram and the Sun, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).