Publication Order of Standalone Novels
| The Human Comedy | 1943 |
| The Adventures of Wesley Jackson | 1946 |
| Rock Wagram | 1951 |
| Tracy’s Tiger | 1951 |
| The Laughing Matter / A Secret Story | 1953 |
| Mama, I Love You | 1956 |
| Papa, You’re Crazy | 1957 |
| Boys and Girls Together | 1963 |
| One Day in the Afternoon of the World | 1964 |
Publication Order of Short Story Collections
| The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories | 1934 |
| Inhale and Exhale | 1936 |
| Three Times Three | 1936 |
| Little Children | 1937 |
| Love, Here Is My Hat | 1938 |
| The Trouble with Tigers | 1938 |
| A Native American | 1938 |
| Peace, It’s Wonderful | 1939 |
| My Name Is Aram | 1940 |
| Saroyan’s Fables | 1941 |
| The Insurance Salesman and Other Stories | 1941 |
| Dear Baby | 1944 |
| The Assyrian and Other Stories | 1950 |
| The Whole Voyald and Other Stories | 1956 |
| After Thirty Years: The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze | 1964 |
| My Kind of Crazy, Wonderful People | 1966 |
| Madness in the Family | 1988 |
Publication Order of Plays
| My Heart’s in the Highlands | 1939 |
| The Time of Your Life | 1939 |
| Love’s Old Sweet Song | 1940 |
| Subway Circus | 1940 |
| The Beautiful People | 1941 |
| Across the Board on Tomorrow Morning | 1941 |
| Hello Out There | 1941 |
| Jim Dandy | 1941 |
| Razzle-Dazzle | 1942 |
| Get Away Old Man | 1944 |
| Don’t Go Away Mad and Two Other Plays | 1949 |
| The Slaughter of the Innocents | 1952 |
| The Cave Dwellers | 1958 |
| Sam, the Highest Jumper of Them All, or The London Comedy | 1961 |
| The Dogs, or The Paris Comedy, and Two Other Plays | 1969 |
| An Armenian Trilogy | 1986 |
| Warsaw Visitor and Tales from the Vienna Streets | 1990 |
Publication Order of Children’s Books
| Me | 1963 |
| Horsey Gorsey and the Frog | 1968 |
| The Tooth and My Father | 1974 |
| The Circus | 1986 |
| The Parsley Garden | 1989 |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
| Hilltop Russians in San Francisco | 1941 |
| The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills | 1952 |
| Here Comes, There Goes, You Know Who | 1961 |
| Not Dying | 1963 |
| Short Drive, Sweet Chariot | 1966 |
| Look at Us | 1967 |
| Letters from 74 Rue Taitbout / Don’t Go, but If You Must, Say Hello to Everybody | 1969 |
| Days of Life and Death and Escape to the Moon | 1970 |
| Places Where I’ve Done Time | 1972 |
| Sons Come and Go, Mothers Hang In Forever | 1976 |
| Chance Meetings | 1978 |
| Obituaries | 1979 |
| Births | 1983 |
About William Saroyan
William Saroyan (1908 to 1981) was an American novelist, playwright and short story writer of Armenian descent, much of whose work is set in his native Fresno, California. He is best known for the play “The Time of Your Life” (1939), the story collection “My Name Is Aram” (1940) and the novel “The Human Comedy” (1943).
Saroyan was born in Fresno on 31 August 1908 to Armenian immigrants from Bitlis in the Ottoman Empire. His father died when he was three, and he spent five years in an orphanage in Oakland with his brother and sister before the family was reunited in Fresno. He left school at fifteen and worked at a series of jobs, among them office manager for a San Francisco telegraph company.
His breakthrough came in 1934, when “Story” magazine published “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze”, about a starving young writer in the Depression. It gave its title to his first collection the same year, and by the end of the 1930s he had published eight volumes of stories. “My Name Is Aram”, about a boy and his immigrant family, became an international bestseller.
He then turned to the theatre. “My Heart’s in the Highlands” was staged in New York in 1939, and “The Time of Your Life”, set in a San Francisco waterfront saloon, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940. Saroyan refused it, on the grounds that commerce should not judge the arts, though he accepted the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award. The play was filmed in 1948 with James Cagney.
“The Human Comedy” began as a screenplay for MGM about a telegraph messenger in a California town during the Second World War. Saroyan turned the script into a novel, published just before the film was released, and won the 1943 Academy Award for Best Story. His later novels include “The Adventures of Wesley Jackson” (1946), “Rock Wagram” (1951) and “The Laughing Matter” (1953).
From 1958 he lived mainly in Paris, and from 1964 he devoted himself chiefly to autobiographical writing. His memoirs run from “The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills” (1952) to “Obituaries” (1979). He also co-wrote the song “Come On-a My House”, a hit for Rosemary Clooney in 1951. Saroyan died in Fresno on 18 May 1981, aged 72.
Photo: Al Aumuller, New York World-Telegram and Sun (Library of Congress), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).