Harold Bloom books in order
American literary critic, scholar, and writer
- Lived
- 1930–2019
- Country
- United States
- Books
- 186
Harold Bloom published 24 novels, 16 novellas, 73 non-fiction books, 12 children's books, 15 poetry collections, 5 plays and 41 other books, beginning with The Anxiety of Influence (1973). The best-known is Cat's Cradle (Modern Critical Interpretations Series) (2002).
Updated September 2026
Where to start with Harold Bloom
Start here
Cat's Cradle (Modern Critical Interpretations Series)
Harold Bloom's most-read book.
Standalone novels in order
The Flight to Lucifer (1979)
Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights (1986)
Ursula K. Le Guin (1986)
Ernest Hemingway's a Farewell to Arms (1987)
Joyce Carol Oates (1987)
Ursula K. Le Guin's the Left Hand of Darkness (1987)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1989)
Modern Fantasy Writers (1995)
American Women Fiction Writers, 1900-1960 (1997)
Lesbian & Bisexual Fiction Writers (1997)
J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (2000)
J.R.R. Tolkien (2000)
Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (2001)
Upton Sinclair's the Jungle (2001)
Cat's Cradle (Modern Critical Interpretations Series) (2002)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (2003)
C.s. Lewis's the Chronicles of Narnia (2006)
Stephen King (2006)
Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird (2007)
Othello (2007)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007)
Tennessee Williams (2007)
Heart of Darkness-joseph Conrad (Modern Critical Interpretations) (2008)
Ray Bradbury (2010)
Novellas in order
Joseph Conrad's Nostromo (1986)
Alexander Pope's the Rape of Thelock (1988)
Classic Science Fiction Writers (1994)
Ernest Hemingway's the Sun Also Rises (1995)
Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1995)
George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1996)
J.d. Salinger's the Catcher in the Rye (1996)
Edgar Allan Poe (1998)
Kate Chopin's the Awakening (1998)
Reviews (1998)
William Faulkner's the Sound and the Fury (1998)
George Orwell's 1984 (2003)
Nathaniel Hawthorne's the Scarlet Letter (Bloom's Guides) (2003)
Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (2006)
Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-five (2007)
Iago (2018)
Non-fiction in order
Shelley's Mythmaking (1959)
Yeats (1970)
Ringers in the Tower (1971)
The Art of the Critic (1985)
The Critical Perspective (1985)
The New Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism (1985)
Twentieth Century British Literature (1985)
Herman Melville (1986)
James Baldwin (1986)
Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1986)
Ezra Pound (1987)
Franz Kafka's the Trial (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations) (1987)
Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1987)
John Steinbeck (1987)
Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (1987)
Marianne Moore (1987)
Oliver Goldsmith (1987)
Arthur Miller's All My Sons (1988)
Frederick Douglass's Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1988)
John Millington Synge's the Playboy of the Western World (1988)
Luigi Pirandello (1988)
Oscar Wilde's the Importance of (1988)
Samuel Beckett's Endgame (1988)
Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (1988)
Petrarch (1989)
Sylvia Plath (1989)
The Book of J (1990)
Toni Morrison (1990)
The American Religion (1992)
Black American Prose Writers of the Harlem Renaissance (1994)
The Western Canon (1994)
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1995)
Notes (1995)
Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1996)
Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1996)
John Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath (1996)
Omens of Millennium (1996)
Women Writers of Children's Literature (1997)
Women Memoirists (1998)
James Joyce (1999)
How to Read and Why (2000)
John Irving (2000)
Margaret Atwood (2000)
John Keats (2001)
Leo Tolstoy (2001)
Moliere (2001)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2001)
Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2001)
Charles Dickens (2002)
Interpretations: One Hundred Years of Solitude (2002)
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (2002)
Seamus Heaney (2002)
Don DeLillo (2003)
George F. Babbitt (2003)
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations) (2003)
Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? (2004)
Essayists And Prophets (Bloom's Literary Criticism 20th Anniversary Collection) (2005)
Jesus and Yahweh (2005)
Modern Critical Views (2005)
Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie (2006)
Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (2007)
Classic Critical Views (2007)
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2008)
Romeo and Juliet (2008)
Twelfth Night (2008)
Elie Wiesel's Night (2009)
Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (2009)
The Kite Runner (2009)
Anne Frank's the Diary of Anne Frank (2010)
Joseph Conrad (2010)
The Daemon Knows (2015)
American Canon (2019)
Possessed by Memory (2019)
Children's books in order
Alex Haley & Malcolm X's the Autobiography of Malcolm X (1996)
Lord of the Flies (1998)
Sandra Ciserno's the House on Mango Street (2003)
David Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars (2004)
Gabriel García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera (2005)
Carlos Fuentes' the Death of Artemio Cruz (2006)
Emerson's Essays (2006)
Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (2006)
Richard Wright's Black Boy (2006)
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (2007)
Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (2009)
Sandra Cisneros's the House on Mango Street (2010)
Poetry in order
The Visionary Company (1961)
Blake's Apocalypse (1963)
The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley (1966)
The Anxiety of Influence (1973)
A Map of Misreading (1975)
Poetry and Repression (1976)
Wallace Stevens (1977)
Agon (1982)
Contemporary Poets (1986)
Virgil (1986)
Homer's the Odyssey (1988)
Poetics of Influence (1988)
William Wordsworth (1998)
African-American Poets (2003)
The Best Poems of the English Language (2004)
Plays in order
William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (Bloom's Notes) (1995)
Shakespeare (1998)
Greek Drama (2004)
As You Like It (2007)
King Lear (2007)
Other books in order
To Kill a Mockingbird (1961)
Twentieth-Century American Literature (Chelsea House Library of Literary Criticism) (1986)
Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1987)
Sigmund Freud's the Interpretation of Dreams (1987)
The Strong Light of the Canonical (1987)
Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1987)
William Shakespeare's The Tempest (1988)
Soren Kierkegaard (1989)
Lolita (Major Literary Characters) (1993)
Black American Poets and Dramatists of the Harlem Renaissance (Writers of English) (1994)
Writers of English (1994)
Black American Women Fiction Writers (Writers of English) (1995)
William Shakespeare's Hamlet (1995)
Beowulf (Bloom's Notes) (1996)
Ernest Hemingway's the Old Man and the Sea (1999)
Henrik Ibsen (1999)
Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye (1999)
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1999)
Albert Camus's The Stranger (2000)
Alice Walker's the Color Purple (2000)
Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front (2001)
Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (2001)
Genius (2002)
George Eliot's Silas Marner (2002)
Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon (2003)
Don DeLillo's White Noise (2003)
Hamlet (2003)
Jay Gatsby (Bloom's Major Literary Characters) (2003)
King Arthur (Bloom's Major Literary Characters) (2003)
Literature of the Holocaust (Bloom's Period Studies) (2003)
Modern Critical Interpretations (2003)
Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint (2003)
T.s. Eliot's the Waste Land (2007)
The Bluest Eyes (2007)
Metamorphosis- Franz Kafka (Modern Critical Interpretations) (2008)
Rebirth and Renewal (2009)
Guides Set (2010)
Guides: Cormac McCarthy's the Road (2011)
J.r.r. Tolkien's the Hobbit (2011)
Shadow of a Great Rock (2011)
Tim O'Brien's the Things They Carried (2011)
About Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world". After publishing his first book in 1959, Bloom wrote more than 50 books, including over 40 books of literary criticism, several books discussing religion, and one novel. He edited hundreds of anthologies concerning numerous literary and philosophical figures for the Chelsea House publishing firm. Bloom's books have been translated into more than 40 languages. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1995.
Biography from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.
Harold Bloom FAQ
- How many books has Harold Bloom written?
- Harold Bloom published 24 novels, 16 novellas, 73 non-fiction books, 12 children's books, 15 poetry collections, 5 plays and 41 other books that we list, as of September 2026.
- What order should I read Harold Bloom's books in?
- Publication order is a safe choice; the full list is above. Most readers start with Cat's Cradle (Modern Critical Interpretations Series).
- What is Harold Bloom's last book?
- Possessed by Memory (2019).
- What is Harold Bloom's most famous book?
- Cat's Cradle (Modern Critical Interpretations Series) (2002) is Harold Bloom's most widely read book.
Authors like Harold Bloom
Sources: book lists and dates from Wikidata and Open Library, ratings from Open Library readers. Last updated September 2026.