Philip Pullman, in full Philip Nicholas Pullman (born October 19, 1946, Norwich, England), British author of novels for children and young adults who is best known for the trilogy His Dark Materials (1995–2000).
Pullman was the son of a Royal Air Force officer. His family moved many times during his childhood and settled for some years in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). On the long journeys dictated by his father’s various postings, he regaled his younger brother with his fantasy tales. After his father died in a plane crash, young Philip was sent back to England to live with his grandparents. Following his mother’s remarriage, Pullman joined her and his stepfather in Australia; they all subsequently moved to Harlech, Wales. After studying English at the University of Oxford, Pullman remained resident in Oxford, working as a teacher.
Meanwhile, Pullman began writing novels. His first titles—The Haunted Storm (1972) and Galatea (1976)—were oriented toward an adult audience. In the 1980s and ’90s Pullman began writing many titles for children and young adults, beginning with Count Karlstein; or, Ride of the Demon Huntsman (1982). Pullman’s Sally Lockhart detective stories, set in Victorian London, were published between 1985 and 1994. His Dark Materials was issued between 1995 and 2000. Each book was subsequently adapted into a BBC radio play, and the entire trilogy was adapted into two stage plays and performed at London’s National Theatre. Northern Lights (1995; also published as The Golden Compass, 1996), the first volume of the trilogy, won the 1996 Carnegie Medal in Literature and was adapted into a major motion picture (2007). It was followed by The Subtle Knife (1997) and The Amber Spyglass (2000). The latter volume won the Whitbread Book Award in 2001. Readers and critics alike considered Pullman a worthy successor to J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, and C.S. Lewis, who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. Unlike Lewis, Pullman eschewed religious parable, embracing instead in his work a humanistic morality and grappling with fundamental questions of life and death while the action flowed between several possible worlds.
Among Pullman’s other works are How to Be Cool (1987), The Broken Bridge (1990), The White Mercedes (1992; reissued and adapted as the film The Butterfly Tattoo ), The Firework-Maker’s Daughter (1995), The Scarecrow and the Servant (2004), and The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ (2010). Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version (2012) collected Pullman’s retellings of the titular German children’s parables. His works were translated into many languages, and Pullman was internationally one of the best-known writers for children at the turn of the 21st century.