Poets book series in reading order

by Ezra Pound

by Walt Whitman

Ezra Pound

59 books• 1 series

Ezra Pound (1885-1972) was an American poet and critic and a central figure of early modernism. A Lume Spento (1908) opens the catalogue, followed by Personae (1909), The Spirit of Romance (1910) and Ripostes (1912), while the long poem The Cantos occupied Pound from about 1915 to 1962. Pound developed Imagism, a movement built on precision and economy of language, and as a London-based foreign editor for American literary magazines he shaped work by T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost and H.D. Pound collaborated with Fascist Italy and the Salo Republic during the Second World War. The catalogue lists 59 titles, the Ezra Pound Letters volumes among them.

Isaac Asimov

553 books• 31 series

Isaac Asimov (c. January 2, 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer who also taught biochemistry at Boston University. Hard science fiction is the core of Asimov's reputation, and the Foundation series about a fallen space empire is the most famous work; Asimov ranked with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke as one of the "Big Three" of the genre. The output also covers mysteries, fantasy and popular science, with non-fiction lines such as How Did We Find Out and the Library of the Universe. Asimov wrote or edited more than 500 books. This catalogue opens with the story Marooned Off Vesta (1939) and names Asimov on 400 of the listed books.

May Sarton was the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton (1912-1995), a Belgian and American novelist, poet and memoirist. Sarton came out as a lesbian in the writing in 1965, at a time when that was rare. Poetry opens the catalogue with Encounter in April (1937) and Inner Landscape (1939); novels follow from The Bridge of Years (1946), and diaries make up a third strand. 54 titles are catalogued through 2024, averaging 214 pages, with the 1990s the busiest decade.

Walt Whitman

60 books• 3 series

Walt Whitman (Walter Whitman Jr., May 31, 1819 to March 26, 1892) was an American poet, essayist and journalist who also wrote two novels. Whitman drew on both transcendentalism and realism and is often called the father of free verse. Leaves of Grass (1855) drew charges of obscenity from some readers for its open sensuality. Born in Huntington on Long Island, Whitman grew up in Brooklyn and left school at 11 to work. The catalogue lists 60 books, including Franklin Evans, or The Inebriate (1842), Drum Taps (1865) and Oh Captain! My Captain! (1865).

Robert Frost

32 books• 4 series

Robert Frost (1874–1963) was an American poet known for realistic pictures of rural New England life and for a command of American colloquial speech, both used to open out social and philosophical questions. Frost is the only poet to have received four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1958, took the Congressional Gold Medal in 1960 and was named poet laureate of Vermont in 1961. Thirty books are catalogued, from A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914) through Mountain Interval and The Road Not Taken (1916) to New Hampshire (1923) and the collected editions.

Charles Bukowski

75 books• 1 series

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) was a German-American poet, novelist and short story writer whose work sits among the poor of Los Angeles. Alcohol, low-wage work, women and the act of writing are the recurring subjects. Bukowski also wrote the column Notes of a Dirty Old Man for the underground paper Open City. The catalogue holds 75 titles dated 1962 to 2019, from the poetry collection Run With the Hunted to later gatherings such as On Drinking. Poetry accounts for most of it, with the novel Post Office arriving in 1971.

Maya Angelou

51 books• 3 series

Maya Angelou (April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014), born Marguerite Annie Johnson, was an American memoirist, poet, essayist and civil rights activist. Angelou published seven autobiographies, three books of essays and several books of poetry. The first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), covers Angelou's life up to age 17. Other catalogued titles include Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981) and All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986). The catalogue counts 51 books, including And Still I Rise (1978), and ends with Strategies of Abundance (2014). Angelou received more than 50 honorary degrees.

Patti Smith

19 books• 1 series

Patti Smith (Patricia Lee Smith, born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet and author who combines rock and poetry. The 1975 album Horses placed Smith in the New York City punk rock movement. Because the Night, co-written with Bruce Springsteen, reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978. The catalogue lists 19 books from Seventh Heaven (1972) to Bread of Angels: A Memoir (2025), including Babel (1978), Woolgathering (1992) and Auguries of Innocence (2005). Smith entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.

Pat Barker

17 books• 3 series

Pat Barker, born in 1943, is an English novelist whose work returns to memory, trauma and survival. The Regeneration trilogy - Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993) and The Ghost Road (1995) - sets poets, soldiers and psychiatrists against the First World War and the treatment of war neurosis. A later sequence retells the Trojan War, opening with The Silence of the Girls in 2018 and running to The Voyage Home in 2024. Barker's catalogue holds 17 books, beginning with Union Street in 1982.

Peter Ackroyd

70 books• 4 series

Peter Ackroyd is an English novelist, biographer and critic, born in 1949, whose standing subject is the history and culture of London. Seventy books are catalogued from London Lickpenny (1973) to Forgotten London (2025). Biography fills much of the list, in Chaucer (1980), Ezra Pound and His World (1980), T.S. Eliot (1984) and later lives of William Blake, Charles Dickens, Charlie Chaplin and Sir Thomas More; the novels include The Great Fire of London (1982), The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde (1983) and Hawksmoor (1985). Ackroyd's Brief Lives, Voyages Through Time, a History of England and Shakespeare: the Biography are the series. The Somerset Maugham Award and two Whitbread Awards followed.

Mary Karr

10 books• 2 series

Mary Karr is an American poet, essayist and memoirist from East Texas, and the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University. The Liars' Club (1995) is her best known book, a bestselling memoir, followed by Cherry (2000) and Lit (2009). Poetry runs alongside the prose: Abacus (1987), The Devil's Tour (1993), Viper Rum (1998), Sinners Welcome (2006) and Tropic of Squalor (2018). The Art of Memoir (2015) completes ten catalogued titles.

Nicholson Baker, born January 7, 1957, is an American novelist and essayist. Baker's fiction favours close description and characterization over plot, and early novels such as The Mezzanine (1988) and Room Temperature (1990) examine a narrator's stream of consciousness in minute detail. Vox, The Fermata and House of Holes are the three erotic novels among ten. The non-fiction includes U and I, about Baker's relationship with John Updike. The catalogue records 19 books through Finding a Likeness (2024), including the Paul Chowder Chronicles.

Wendell Berry (August 5, 1934 - August 31, 2026) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, farmer, environmental activist and cultural critic closely tied to rural Kentucky. Berry set out agrarian themes in The Unsettling of America (1977) and The Gift of Good Land (1981). The Port William novels and stories, including A Place on Earth, Jayber Crow and That Distant Land, examine rural community life. Berry received the National Humanities Medal, delivered the 2012 Jefferson Lecture and belonged to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. The catalogue lists 104 books from Nathan Coulter (1960) to Marce Catlett (2025).

Jane Yolen

237 books• 22 series

Jane Yolen (Jane Hyatt Yolen, February 11, 1939 to June 11, 2026) was an American author of fantasy, science fiction and children's books. The Devil's Arithmetic, a Holocaust novella, is the best-known Yolen work, and Owl Moon and The Emperor and the Kite are among the others. The short works Sister Emily's Lightship and Lost Girls both won Nebula Awards. The catalogue counts 237 books from The Witch Who Wasn't (1964) to Daddy Plays a Mean Guitar (2026). Series include Commander Toad, How Do Dinosaurs...?, Pit Dragons, the Young Merlin Trilogy, Books of the Great Alta and Tartan Magic. Yolen worked as an editor, collaborated most often with Adam Stemple, and in 2012 became the first woman to give the Andrew Lang lecture.

Saul Bellow

34 books• 2 series

Saul Bellow is the only writer to have won the National Book Award for Fiction three times. Born Solomon Bellows on June 10, 1915, Bellow was an American writer who died on April 5, 2005, and whose honours include the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature and the National Medal of Arts. The National Book Foundation gave Bellow its Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1990. The catalogue lists 34 books from Dangling Man (1944) to Leaving the Yellow House (2018), including The Victim (1947), The Adventures of Augie March (1953), Seize the Day (1956), Henderson the Rain King (1959), Herzog (1964) and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970). Subjects name Jewish men and college teachers.

Paul Auster

45 books• 1 series

Paul Auster, born in 1947 and died in 2024, was an American novelist, memoirist, poet and filmmaker whose fiction keeps returning to New York, authorship and the shape of a life. The New York Trilogy, City of Glass, Ghosts and The Locked Room, is the best known work, alongside Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012) and 4 3 2 1 (2017). Auster's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. Forty-five titles are catalogued, from White Spaces (1980) to Bloodbath Nation (2023).

Patricia MacLachlan (March 3, 1938 to March 31, 2022), born Patricia Marie Pritzkau, was an American children's writer. MacLachlan's novel Sarah, Plain and Tall won the Newbery Medal in 1986 and gave its name to a series. The catalogue holds 63 books for young readers, including the Barkus series, Arthur, for the Very First Time and My Poet (2022). Family life, dogs, grandparents, friendship and frontier life are frequent subjects.

Robert Penn Warren

69 books• 3 series

Robert Penn Warren is the only writer to have received Pulitzer Prizes in both fiction and poetry: the 1947 novel prize for All the King's Men (1946), and the poetry prize in 1958 and again in 1979. Born on April 24, 1905, and dying on September 15, 1989, Warren worked as a poet, novelist, critic and Yale professor. Warren was a founding figure of New Criticism and a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and co-founded The Southern Review in 1935 alongside Cleanth Brooks. Yale gave Warren an honorary Doctor of Letters in 1973. Catalogued books number 69, among them John Brown (1929), Understanding Poetry (1938), Night Rider (1939) and At Heaven's Gate (1943).

Carl Sandburg

48 books• 2 series

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist and editor who won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for poetry and one for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. In Sandburg's lifetime, collected verse such as Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918) and Smoke and Steel (1920) established the poet as a major literary figure. The catalogue holds 48 books from In Reckless Ecstasy and Incidentals (1904) to Poetry for Kids (2017), including Rootabaga Stories (1922) and Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years (1926). Subjects include American poetry and children's poetry.

Monica Furlong was a British author, journalist and activist whose work sat close to the Church of England; an obituary named her the church's most influential and creative layperson of the post-war period. The catalogue holds 41 books between With Love to the Church (1965) and Love Unknown (2021), covering biography, meditations, church history and the campaign for the ordination of women, with Merton (1980) among the lives. Furlong also wrote children's fiction, including the Doran books.

John Crowley

31 books• 3 series

John Crowley (1942-2026) was an American author of fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction and non-fiction, and a documentary film writer in a second career. Little, Big (1981) is the best known of the novels and took the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. The Aegypt sequence turns on Hermeticism, memory, families and religion. The catalogue lists 31 titles published between 1975 and 2019, opening with The Deep (1975) and closing with And Go Like This (2019). Mysticism, magic and short fiction recur across the listing, and the 2000s are its busiest decade.

Roberto Bolaño

23 books• 1 series

Roberto Bolaño Ávalos (28 April 1953 - 15 July 2003) was a Chilean novelist, short-story writer, poet and essayist. The Rómulo Gallegos Prize went to Bolaño in 1999 for the novel The Savage Detectives, and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction followed posthumously in 2008 for 2666. This catalogue holds 23 titles in English translation, from The Third Reich (1989) to Cowboy Graves: Three Novellas (2017), among them Distant Star (1996), Nazi Literature in the Americas (1996), Last Evenings on Earth (1997) and Amulet (1999). Recorded subjects include Chilean literature and poetry, poets, authors, missing persons, and politics and government.

Pablo Medina is a Cuban American poet and novelist. Medina is a professor at Emerson College, in its Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing, and directs the MFA program there. The catalogue lists 11 books from Exiled Memories (1990) to The Cuban Comedy (2019), including Arching Into the Afterlife (1991), The Marks of Birth (1994), The Cigar Roller (2005) and Cubop City Blues (2012). Subject headings cover Cuban Americans, immigrants, New York City, childhood and youth, and poetry by one author.