Book Stack

"Philip Pullman" (born in 19 October 1946) really is a novelist. He is the writer of some of the best-selling books, famous for his fantasy series "His Dark Materials" and also the fictionalised details of the life history of Jesus. In about 2008, the British daily national newspaper, The Times named Philip Pullman in the listing of the "50 greatest authors of Britain since 1945".

Philip Pullman was born in Norwich, England, the son of Audrey Evelyn Pullman (née Merrifield) and Royal Air Force pilot Alfred Outram Pullman. The family travelled with his father's job, including to Southern Rhodesia, though the majority of his formative years was spent in Llanbedr in Ardudwy, north Wales. His novel, the "Northern Lights", which is really the first written book of the trilogy works, "His Dark Materials", has won medals, and was recognised as the a best English-literature children's book. It has been made into a film which is, The Golden Compass.

Pullman married Judith Speller in 1970 and began teaching children aged 9 to 13 at Bishop Kirk Middle School in Summertown, North Oxford and writing school plays. His first published work was The Haunted Storm, which was joint-winner of the New English Library's Young Writer's Award in 1972. Pullman taught part-time at Westminster College, Oxford, between 1988 and 1996, continuing to write children's stories. He began His Dark Materials in about 1993. In 2012, during a break from writing The Book Of Dust, a companion book to the Dark Material Trilogy, Pullman was asked by Penguin Classics to curate 50 of Grimms' classic fairytales, from their compendium of over 200 stories. "They are not all of the same quality," said Pullman, "Some are easily much better than others. And some are obvious classics. You can't do a selected Grimms' without Rumpelstiltskin, Cinderella and so on."] Beginning in August 2013, Pullman was elected President of the Society of Authors - the "ultimate honour" awarded by the British writers body, and a position first held by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

His Dark Materials is a trilogy consisting of Northern Lights (titled The Golden Compass in North America), The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. Northern Lights won the Carnegie Medal for children's fiction in the UK in 1995. The Amber Spyglass was awarded both 2001 Whitbread Prize for best children's book and the Whitbread Book of the Year prize in January 2002, the first children's book to receive that award. The series won popular acclaim in late 2003, taking third place in the BBC's Big Read poll. Pullman later wrote two companion pieces to the trilogy, entitled Lyra's Oxford, and Once Upon a Time in the North. A third companion piece Pullman refers to as the "green book" will expand upon his character Will. He has plans for one more, the as-yet-unpublished The Book of Dust. This book is not a continuation of the trilogy but will include characters and events from His Dark Materials.


Excerpt from Wikipedia

His Dark Materials

1. Northern Lights
2. The Subtle Knife
3. The Amber Spyglass

His Dark Materials companion books

1. Lyra's Oxford
2. Once Upon a Time in the North
3. The Collectors
4. The Book of Dust