Philip Pullman: United Kingdom ★ Author

Abstract

Philip PullmanUnited Kingdom ★ Author Lydia Kokkola “Stories are the most important thing in the world. Without stories, we wouldn’t be human beings.” Philip Pullman The son of an Air Force pilot, Philip Pullman was born in Norwich in 1946, but spent much of his early childhood in his Grandparents’ rectory where he heard stories combining the landscape, history, Biblical stories and fiction; elements that were to emerge in his own story-telling as an adult. At the age of eleven, his family moved to North Wales where Pullman took up illustrating. These experiences were woven into one of his earliest novels, The Broken Bridge. His formal education at Oxford University was also to produce a fictional setting as it was incorporated into the His Dark Materials trilogy. After a short but successful career as a teacher and teacher-trainer, he took up fulltime writing in 1995 following the success of Northern Lights (The Golden Compass in North America). His works have been translated into over 40 languages and include adventure stories, plays, writing for adults as the well as the fantasy and fairy tales for which he is best known. Internationally, Pullman is best known for the His Dark Materials trilogy set in an alternative universe. The first novel was made into a film—The Golden Compass—and has also been successfully adapted for the stage. Pullman’s complex engagement with Christianity, spirituality and the desire to keep children “innocent,” as well as his allusions to classical works of English literature such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost make for a series of cross-over books which appeal equally, albeit differently, to children, adults, and literary critics. Prior to the publication of these works, however, Pullman had already established himself as an author of substance. The Sally Lockhart Quartet, set in London in the Victorian era, features an enterprising young woman who exposes the darker aspects of the puritanical morality and extreme class division of the period as she searches for a ruby that is rightfully hers. Pullman returned to the Victorian era in his The New Cut Gang series, which features a gang of children who appear to have stepped out of a Sherlock Holmes story. Pullman’s appreciation of Arthur Conan Doyle is also evident in his play, Sherlock Holmes and the Limehouse Horror. Pullman’s prolific and varied output, his willingness to be provocative, his complex use of allusion, and good storytelling have made him as popular with critics as he is with his child and teenage readers. Several monographs and numerous articles have been produced on his works, and he regularly speaks in public addressing issues ranging from religious tolerance to funding for public library services. Selected Publications The Ruby in the Smoke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Print. Google Scholar The Broken Bridge. London: Macmillan Children’s Books 1990. Print. Google Scholar Northern Lights. London: Scholastic Point, 1995. Print. Google Scholar Clockwork Or, All Wound Up. New York: Doubleday, 1996. Print. Google Scholar I Was a Rat! or, The Scarlet Slippers. New York: Doubleday, 1999. Print. [End Page 58] Google Scholar Copyright © 2012 Bookbird, Inc