Poets book series in reading order

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.

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.

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.