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Richard Yates never sold more than 12,000 hardcover copies of any of his books, and by the time he died in 1992 all of his fiction was going out of print. His first novel, Revolutionary Road (1961), had been a National Book Award finalist alongside Catch-22; in 2005 TIME put it on its list of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923, and in 2008 Sam Mendes filmed it with Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. In between he wrote speeches for Robert F. Kennedy, taught at Iowa, and kept writing about the same people: ambitious, disappointed Americans of the 1940s and 1950s who tell themselves they are different from everyone else. This guide covers his 10 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 key books · 1961–2001 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Richard Yates published eight novels and two story collections, and a Collected Stories followed in 2001. His best-known books are Revolutionary Road (1961), Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (1962) and The Easter Parade (1976). Start with Revolutionary Road, then read The Easter Parade to see the same eye turned on two sisters across forty years.
Where to Start with Richard Yates
If you want his defining novel
→ Revolutionary Road (1961) — a marriage coming apart in 1950s suburban Connecticut.
If you want his best short fiction
→ Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (1962) — eleven stories of New York loneliness.
If you want a family over four decades
→ The Easter Parade (1976) — two sisters from the 1930s to the 1970s.
If you want the complete stories
→ The Collected Stories of Richard Yates (2001) — both collections plus the uncollected work.
10 Richard Yates Books, in Order
Revolutionary Road
In 1955 Frank and April Wheeler live in the Revolutionary Hill Estates in Connecticut, convinced they are better than their neighbours. After April’s failed amateur stage performance she proposes that the family move to Paris, but a third pregnancy and a promotion for Frank unravel the plan, with fatal consequences. It was a finalist for the 1962 National Book Award, which went to Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, and was filmed by Sam Mendes in 2008.
Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
Eleven stories, mostly about New Yorkers in the late 1940s and 1950s: schoolchildren, office workers, soldiers, TB patients. They include “Doctor Jack-o’-Lantern”, “The Best of Everything” and “Builders”, about a would-be writer who ghostwrites for a cab driver. Reviewers compared the collection to Joyce’s Dubliners.
A Special Providence
Robert Prentice, a young infantryman in Europe in 1944, tries and fails to prove himself in friendship, combat and love, while the book also follows his mother Alice, a sculptor whose drinking and illusions shape his life. It draws on Yates’s own army service and on his mother. It sold poorly on publication.
Disturbing the Peace
John Wilder, a salesman in New York in the early 1960s, slides through alcoholism and mental illness into psychiatric hospitals, while his marriage and career fall apart. It is the bleakest of his novels and received some of his worst reviews.
The Easter Parade
It follows the sisters Sarah and Emily Grimes and their mother Pookie from the 1930s to the 1970s. Sarah marries young and leaves the city with a husband who beats her; Emily, the clever one, builds a career in New York through a string of unsatisfying relationships. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and is often ranked with Revolutionary Road as his best work.
A Good School
Dorset Academy, a second-rate Connecticut boarding school during the Second World War, seen by William Grove, a boy who works on the school newspaper while older students leave for the war. It is based on Yates’s own years at Avon Old Farms School.
Liars in Love
His second collection, with stories set mostly between the 1940s and the early 1960s and many drawn from his own life; “Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired” and the title story are the best known. The New York Times called the stories “wonderfully crafted”.
Young Hearts Crying
Michael Davenport, a poet, and his wife Lucy, from their courtship around 1950 to their divorce and the years after. They leave Greenwich Village for the suburbs, Michael refuses to live on Lucy’s inherited money, and their unrealised ambitions drive them apart.
Cold Spring Harbor
His last completed novel, and his shortest at under 200 pages. On Long Island in the early 1940s, Evan Shepard marries Rachel Drake and is drawn into the life of her mother Gloria, another of Yates’s portraits of a flighty, drinking parent. It sold poorly and was soon out of print.
The Collected Stories of Richard Yates
Published nine years after his death, with an introduction by Richard Russo. It brings together Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, Liars in Love and the stories Yates never collected, and helped start the revival of his reputation.
In What Order to Read Richard Yates
None of the novels continue from one another, so you can read in any order. Publication order does show something: the two strongest books come first and in the middle, and many later books return to the material of his own life, his mother, his boarding school, his war and his breakdowns.
Read Revolutionary Road first and The Easter Parade second. If you like short fiction, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness is the best single collection; leave Disturbing the Peace until you know his work.
A reading path
1. Revolutionary Road (1961)
2. Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (1962)
3. The Easter Parade (1976)
4. A Good School (1978)
5. Young Hearts Crying (1984)
Everything Else Richard Yates Wrote
Beyond the 10 key books: 2 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Screenplays and unfinished work
2
2 books · 1969–1995
- 1969The Bridge at Remagena screenplay credit on the Second World War film
- 1995Uncertain Timesan excerpt of his unfinished novel drawing on his time as a speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy, published in Open City
The years · 1926–2008
Quick facts about Richard Yates
- Known for
- Richard Yates is known for unsentimental fiction about the disappointed hopes of middle-class Americans after the Second World War, above all the suburban marriage of Revolutionary Road.
- 1926
- Born in Yonkers, New York
- 1992
- Dies in Birmingham, Alabama
- 2008
- Sam Mendes films Revolutionary Road
- Born
- 3 February 1926, Yonkers, New York; his parents divorced when he was three
- Died
- 7 November 1992, Birmingham, Alabama, aged 66, after complications from surgery; he had emphysema
- Education
- Avon Old Farms School, Connecticut
- War service
- US Army infantry in France and Germany, Second World War
- Worked
- United Press, Remington Rand, speechwriter for Robert F. Kennedy (1963)
- Taught
- The New School, Iowa Writers’ Workshop, USC, University of Alabama
- Biography
- Blake Bailey, A Tragic Honesty (2003)
The red mark is 1961: Revolutionary Road, his first and best-known novel.
How Richard Yates Writes: Plain Prose, No Mercy
Yates writes plain, clear, conventional prose, with no experiments in form. Stewart O’Nan compared him to Chekhov; his own idol was F. Scott Fitzgerald, and like Fitzgerald he writes about people who want a grander life than the one they have. In Revolutionary Road he moves between Frank’s and April’s points of view so that the reader sees each of them lying to the other and to themselves.
His material was his own life. His divorced, drinking, artistic mother appears as Alice Prentice in A Special Providence and Pookie Grimes in The Easter Parade; Avon Old Farms becomes Dorset Academy; his army service, his tuberculosis and his breakdowns all turn up in the fiction. He said of Revolutionary Road that he meant it as “an indictment of American life in the 1950s”, an age of conformity his characters despise and cannot escape.
His characters are rarely punished by plot; they are undone by self-deception, and he rarely lets them off. Critics praised the “small fiercely defended dignities” of his people, and writers from Kurt Vonnegut to Richard Ford kept championing him while his books were out of print.
Frequently asked questions about Richard Yates’s books
How many books has Richard Yates written?
Ten in his lifetime: eight novels and two story collections, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (1962) and Liars in Love (1981). The Collected Stories of Richard Yates followed in 2001, which makes 10 books on this page.
What are Richard Yates’s books in order?
Revolutionary Road (1961), Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (1962), A Special Providence (1969), Disturbing the Peace (1975), The Easter Parade (1976), A Good School (1978), Liars in Love (1981), Young Hearts Crying (1984), Cold Spring Harbor (1986) and The Collected Stories of Richard Yates (2001).
Where should I start with Richard Yates?
With Revolutionary Road, his first and best-known novel. Then read The Easter Parade, or Eleven Kinds of Loneliness if you prefer short stories.
What is Richard Yates’s most famous book?
Revolutionary Road (1961), about Frank and April Wheeler’s marriage in 1955 Connecticut. It was a National Book Award finalist in 1962, and in 2005 TIME named it one of the 100 best English-language novels published since 1923.
Is Revolutionary Road a film?
Yes. Sam Mendes directed it in 2008 from a screenplay by Justin Haythe, with Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as the Wheelers and Michael Shannon as John Givings. Winslet won the Golden Globe for Best Actress for the role.
Did Richard Yates win any major prizes?
No major prize. Revolutionary Road was a finalist for the 1962 National Book Award, which went to Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, and The Easter Parade was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Is Richard Yates still alive?
No. He died on 7 November 1992 in Birmingham, Alabama, aged 66, after complications from surgery; he had emphysema. He had been teaching at the University of Alabama.
Is there a biography of Richard Yates?
Yes. Blake Bailey’s A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates (2003) is the first full biography. Stewart O’Nan’s 1999 essay “The Lost World of Richard Yates” in the Boston Review is credited with reviving interest in his work.
Why did Richard Yates go out of print?
His books never sold well, under 12,000 hardcover copies each, and after his death in 1992 all of his fiction went out of print. Reissues, the 2001 Collected Stories and the 2008 film brought him back.
Is Richard Yates connected to Seinfeld?
Yes. His daughter Monica dated Larry David, and she is said to have inspired Elaine Benes. The episode “The Jacket”, in which Elaine’s gruff writer father intimidates Jerry and George, was based on Larry David’s first meeting with Yates.
Footnotes
- Richard Yates (novelist) — Wikipedia
- Revolutionary Road — Wikipedia
- The Easter Parade — Wikipedia
- The Lost World of Richard Yates — Stewart O’Nan
- Richard Yates — Bhamwiki
- Interview with Richard Yates — Ploughshares, 1972
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.
“I think I meant it more as an indictment of American life in the 1950s.”
— Richard Yates on Revolutionary Road, interview with DeWitt Henry and Geoffrey Clark, Ploughshares (1972)
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