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In 1960 John Updike, then 28, published a novel about a former high-school basketball star who goes out to buy his wife cigarettes and keeps driving. He returned to Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom roughly once a decade for the next thirty years, and two of the sequels won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, in 1982 and 1991. Born in Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1932, Updike wrote for The New Yorker from 1954 and lived most of his life in small towns north of Boston. By his death in 2009 he had published more than twenty novels, more than a dozen story collections, eight volumes of poetry and nine of essays and criticism. This guide covers his 13 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 13 key books · 1960–2006 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
John Updike published more than twenty novels between 1959 and 2008. The best known are the four Rabbit novels, Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990), plus Couples (1968) and The Witches of Eastwick (1984). Start with Rabbit, Run: it opens the series that won him two Pulitzer Prizes.
Where to Start with John Updike
If you want his defining book
→ Rabbit, Run (1960) — the first of the four Rabbit novels.
If you want the prize winners
→ Rabbit Is Rich (1981) — the Rabbit novel that won the Pulitzer, the National Book Award and the NBCC award.
If you want the short stories
→ The Early Stories (2003) — more than two decades of stories in one volume.
If you want something lighter
→ The Witches of Eastwick (1984) — the comic novel behind the 1987 film.
13 John Updike Books, in Order
Rabbit, Run
Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is 26, a former high-school basketball star who now sells the MagiPeeler kitchen gadget in a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1950s. Married to Janice, with a two-year-old son, Nelson, he walks out on his family, and the novel follows the three months that follow. Time included it in its list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. A film version starring James Caan came out in 1970.
Pigeon Feathers
His second story collection, much of it set in the Pennsylvania small-town world of his childhood. It includes the title story, about a boy whose religious faith is shaken, and “A & P”, about a supermarket checkout boy who quits his job over three girls in bathing suits, one of his most anthologised stories.
The Centaur
George Caldwell, a worn-out high-school science teacher outside the Pennsylvania town of Alton, and his son Peter, an aspiring painter, spend a few winter days stranded together. Updike lays the Greek myth over the story: Caldwell is also the centaur Chiron, and the local mechanic is Hephaestus. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1964.
Couples
Ten couples in Tarbox, a small Massachusetts town, from March 1962 to the months after the Kennedy assassination, with Piet Hanema, a building contractor, at the centre of their affairs. The novel’s frankness about sex put Updike on the cover of Time, and it remains one of his best-selling books.
Rabbit Redux
It is 1969 and America is about to land a man on the moon. Rabbit is a Linotype operator at a printing plant; Janice leaves him for Charlie Stavros, and Harry takes in Jill, an eighteen-year-old runaway from Connecticut, and Skeeter, a drug-dealing Vietnam veteran. The arrangement ends in a fire that kills Jill.
Rabbit Is Rich
In 1979, with gas lines lengthening, Harry is chief sales representative of Springer Motors, the Toyota agency in Brewer, Pennsylvania, that Janice’s family owns, and comfortable for the first time. It won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
The Witches of Eastwick
Three divorced women in the Rhode Island town of Eastwick in the early 1970s, Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart and Sukie Rougemont, discover they have magical powers, and a newcomer, Darryl Van Horne, buys the old mansion outside town and seduces all three. The 1987 film starred Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer; a stage musical followed in London in 2000, and a sequel, The Widows of Eastwick, in 2008.
Self-Consciousness
His only memoir, in six chapters: on his hometown of Shillington, Pennsylvania, his psoriasis, his stutter and asthma, his ancestors, religion, and, in “On Not Being a Dove”, why he supported the Vietnam War when most writers he knew opposed it.
Rabbit at Rest
Set in 1988–89, with Harry and Janice wintering in Florida. Nelson, now running the dealership, is stealing from it to pay for his drug habit, and Harry has a heart attack while sailing with his granddaughter. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991, the second Rabbit novel to do so, and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
In the Beauty of the Lilies
Four generations of one American family from 1910 to 1990. A Presbyterian minister in Paterson, New Jersey, loses his faith in 1910; his granddaughter becomes the Hollywood star Alma DeMott; her son joins an armed religious commune in Colorado that ends in a siege like the one at Waco.
Gertrude and Claudius
A prequel to Hamlet: Gertrude’s girlhood as a king’s daughter, her arranged marriage to the future King Hamlet and her affair in middle age with his younger brother, Claudius. Updike draws on the older Scandinavian versions of the story for names and details, and ends where the play begins.
The Early Stories
The stories he wrote in his twenties, thirties and forties, from 1953 to 1975, gathered in one large volume with a new foreword. It includes the Olinger stories of his Pennsylvania boyhood and the Maples stories about a marriage coming apart. It won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 2004.
Terrorist
Ahmad Ashmawy Mulloy, an 18-year-old American-born Muslim in New Prospect, a declining New Jersey town Updike associated with Paterson, agrees to drive a truck bomb into the Lincoln Tunnel. His school guidance counsellor, Jack Levy, who has been trying to steer him towards college, finds him on the road and rides with him into the tunnel.
In What Order to Read John Updike
Only the Rabbit books need to be read in order. The four novels, Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990), are each set at the end of a decade, 1959, 1969, 1979 and 1988–89, and Harry ages with them. The novella Rabbit Remembered (2000), at the end of Licks of Love, follows his family after his death and closes the series.
Everything else stands alone. The Witches of Eastwick has a sequel, The Widows of Eastwick (2008), and the comic novelist Henry Bech appears in three linked books, but you can read his other novels and story collections in any order.
A reading path
1. Rabbit, Run (1960)
2. The Early Stories (2003)
3. Rabbit Redux (1971)
4. Rabbit Is Rich (1981)
5. Rabbit at Rest (1990)
Everything Else John Updike Published
Beyond the 13 key books: 23 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
The rest of the Rabbit series
1
1 book · 2000
- 2000Rabbit Rememberednovella that closes the series, first published in Licks of Love
Other novels
12
12 books · 1959–2008
- 1959The Poorhouse Fairhis first novel
- 1965Of the Farma short novel
- 1975A Month of Sundaysa novel
- 1976Marry Mea novel
- 1978The Coupa novel
- 1986Roger’s Versiona novel
- 1992Memories of the Ford Administrationa novel
- 1994Brazila novel
- 1997Toward the End of Timethe novel David Foster Wallace reviewed in 1997
- 2002Seek My Facea novel
- 2004Villagesa novel
- 2008The Widows of Eastwicksequel to The Witches of Eastwick, his last novel
Bech books
2
2 books · 1970–1998
- 1970Bech: A Bookstories about the novelist Henry Bech
- 1998Bech at Baythe last Bech book
Short story collections
5
5 books · 1959–2013
- 1959The Same Doorhis first story collection
- 1979Too Far to Gothe Maples stories
- 2000Licks of Lovestories, with the novella Rabbit Remembered
- 2009My Father’s Tearshis last stories, published after his death
- 2013The Collected StoriesLibrary of America, 186 stories in two volumes
Poetry and criticism
3
3 books · 1958–2009
- 1958The Carpentered Henhis first book, poems
- 1983Hugging the Shoreessays and criticism; National Book Critics Circle Award
- 2009Endpointhis last poems
The years · 1932–2009
Quick facts about John Updike
- Known for
- John Updike is known for chronicling American middle-class and small-town life over half a century, above all through the four Rabbit Angstrom novels.
- 1932
- Born in Reading, Pennsylvania
- 1954
- Graduates from Harvard; first story in The New Yorker
- 1960
- Rabbit, Run
- 1982
- First Pulitzer Prize, for Rabbit Is Rich
- 1991
- Second Pulitzer, for Rabbit at Rest
- 2009
- Dies in Danvers, Massachusetts
- Born
- 18 March 1932, Reading, Pennsylvania; grew up in nearby Shillington
- Died
- 27 January 2009, Danvers, Massachusetts, of lung cancer, aged 76
- Education
- Harvard University, 1954; Ruskin School of Art, Oxford
- Worked
- The New Yorker, from 1954: staff writer for two years, then a contributor for the rest of his life
- Married
- Mary Pennington (1953, divorced 1974), then Martha Bernhard (1977)
- Honours
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1982, 1991), National Book Award (1964, 1982), National Medal of Arts (1989), National Humanities Medal (2003)
The red mark is 1960: Rabbit, Run, the first of the four Rabbit Angstrom novels.
How John Updike Writes: The Mundane, Given Its Due
Updike’s subject is ordinary middle-class life in small-town Pennsylvania and New England: car dealerships, marriages, church, adultery, money. In the foreword to The Early Stories he wrote that his only duty was to describe reality as it had come to him, and he once said, “I like middles.” The Rabbit novels do this at the scale of a lifetime, setting one man’s small decisions against the moon landing, the 1979 gas lines and the end of the Cold War.
His prose is famously dense with physical detail, and the Rabbit books are written in the present tense, close to Harry’s point of view. Updike called his style an exercise in point of view and described Rabbit as “a brother to me”. The books he wrote around myth or other texts, The Centaur and Gertrude and Claudius, use the same method on borrowed material.
Religion and sex run through almost everything, often in the same scene. That frankness put Updike on the cover of Time for Couples in 1968, and it is also what later critics, including David Foster Wallace, held against him. For more American realists of marriage and small towns, see the guides to Richard Ford and Jonathan Franzen below.
Frequently asked questions about John Updike’s books
How many books has John Updike written?
Dozens: more than twenty novels, more than a dozen short-story collections, eight volumes of poetry, nine of essays and criticism, a play and a memoir. This page covers his 13 key books; the rest are listed under “Everything Else John Updike Published”.
What are John Updike’s books in order?
His key books in order: Rabbit, Run (1960), Pigeon Feathers (1962), The Centaur (1963), Couples (1968), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), The Witches of Eastwick (1984), Self-Consciousness (1989), Rabbit at Rest (1990), In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996), Gertrude and Claudius (2000), The Early Stories (2003) and Terrorist (2006).
What is the order of the Rabbit books?
Rabbit, Run (1960), Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990), followed by the novella Rabbit Remembered (2000), which appears in the collection Licks of Love. Each novel is set at the end of a decade, so read them in this order.
Where should I start with John Updike?
With Rabbit, Run (1960), which introduces Harry Angstrom and leads into the rest of the series. If you prefer short fiction, start with The Early Stories (2003).
What is John Updike’s most famous book?
Rabbit, Run (1960) is the best known, and the Rabbit series as a whole is his most celebrated work. Couples (1968) was his biggest popular success at the time, and The Witches of Eastwick (1984) is best known through the 1987 film.
Did John Updike win the Pulitzer Prize?
Twice, for Rabbit Is Rich (1982) and Rabbit at Rest (1991). He also won the National Book Award for The Centaur (1964) and Rabbit Is Rich (1982), and the PEN/Faulkner Award for The Early Stories (2004).
Which John Updike books have been adapted?
Rabbit, Run was filmed in 1970 with James Caan as Rabbit. The Witches of Eastwick became the 1987 film with Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer, and a stage musical in London in 2000. The Maples stories were adapted as the NBC television film Too Far to Go (1979).
Why is John Updike criticised for how he writes about women?
Critics have long objected to his depictions of women and sex. The best-known attack is David Foster Wallace’s 1997 review of Toward the End of Time in The New York Observer, which quoted younger readers calling him “just a penis with a thesaurus”. In 2008 the Literary Review gave him a lifetime achievement award in its Bad Sex in Fiction prize.
Is John Updike still alive?
No. He died of lung cancer on 27 January 2009, aged 76, in Danvers, Massachusetts. A last story collection, My Father’s Tears, and a book of poems, Endpoint, were published after his death.
Footnotes
- John Updike — Wikipedia
- Rabbit at Rest — Wikipedia
- Couples (novel) — Wikipedia
- The Early Stories — PBS NewsHour
- Licks of Love — Kirkus Reviews, 2000
- David Foster Wallace on John Updike — Book Marks
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“My only duty was to describe reality as it had come to me, to give the mundane its beautiful due.”
— John Updike, foreword to The Early Stories (2003)
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