Author Guide · Memoir, Fiction & Creativity
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In October 2008 Eat Pray Love was still at number two on The New York Times nonfiction list, 88 weeks after it first appeared. By then Elizabeth Gilbert, born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1969, had already published a story collection, a novel about Maine lobstermen and a biography that was a finalist for the National Book Award, all of which the memoir’s success pushed out of view. Since then she has alternated: two large historical novels, a book about creativity, a second and a third memoir. One title that carries her name, the 1947 cookbook At Home on the Range, was written by her great-grandmother. This guide covers her nine key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 9 key books · 1997–2025 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Elizabeth Gilbert has written nine books of her own, from Pilgrims (1997) to All the Way to the River (2025). The best known are Eat Pray Love (2006), Big Magic (2015) and the novels The Signature of All Things (2013) and City of Girls (2019). Start with Eat Pray Love; the earlier books show a different writer, and are worth reading on for.
Where to Start with Elizabeth Gilbert
If you want the book everyone knows
→ Eat Pray Love (2006) — the 2006 memoir of a year in Italy, India and Indonesia.
If you want her argument about creativity
→ Big Magic (2015) — no interest in her personal life required.
If you want her most ambitious fiction
→ The Signature of All Things (2013) — a nineteenth-century botanist’s life, built on real research.
If you want reported nonfiction
→ The Last American Man (2002) — the National Book Award finalist.
9 Elizabeth Gilbert Books, in Order
Pilgrims
Her first book, a collection of short stories. Esquire had published the title story in 1993, when she was still unknown. The collection was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and won a Pushcart Prize.
Stern Men
Her first novel is set on Fort Niles and Courne Haven, two islands off the coast of Maine whose lobstermen have feuded for generations over the waters between them. Ruth Thomas, eighteen, comes home from boarding school meaning to work the boats rather than go on studying, and falls for a young lobsterman from the rival island.
The Last American Man
A biography of Eustace Conway, who left his family’s suburban home in 1977, at seventeen, to live in the Appalachian Mountains, and spent the following decades trying to persuade other Americans to live closer to the land. It was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Eat Pray Love
After her divorce Gilbert spends a year travelling: Italy for pleasure, an ashram in India for devotion, Bali for balance. The book has sold more than twelve million copies in over thirty languages, and Columbia Pictures released the film in August 2010 with Julia Roberts as Gilbert. Critics also made it the example of what they called “priv-lit”, a literature of privilege.
Committed
The direct sequel to Eat Pray Love. Gilbert and Felipe, the man she met in Bali, had agreed never to marry, until US immigration officials told them he could only return to the country as her husband. While the papers are prepared they travel through Southeast Asia, and she researches the history of marriage, from early Christianity to Henry VIII and the Hmong.
The Signature of All Things
Alma Whittaker, the daughter of a wealthy botanical explorer, grows up in nineteenth-century Philadelphia and gives her life to the study of mosses, which leads her to the questions about evolution that Darwin was working on at the same time. The novel was named a best book of 2013 by The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Yorker, and longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Big Magic
A book-length version of the argument in her 2009 TED talk: that ideas come to people rather than from them, that creative work should be done for its own sake, and that fear and perfectionism, not lack of talent, are what stop most people. It draws on her own years of rejection before Eat Pray Love.
City of Girls
In the summer of 1940 nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris, dismissed from Vassar after failing every exam, is sent to live with her Aunt Peg, who runs the Lily Playhouse, a crumbling theatre in midtown Manhattan. Vivian tells the story at eighty-nine, in a letter to a younger woman named Angela. The Guardian called it “a glorious, multilayered celebration of womanhood”.
All the Way to the River
A memoir of her relationship with her close friend Rayya Elias, for whom she left her marriage after Elias was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2016, and of the addictions that consumed them both; Elias died in January 2018. Gilbert also writes that she thought about killing Elias, and that she came to understand herself as a sex addict. Published by Riverhead on 9 September 2025, it was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club.
In What Order to Read Elizabeth Gilbert
Only one pair needs to be read in order: Committed (2010) picks up where Eat Pray Love (2006) ends and assumes you know how it finished. All the Way to the River (2025) also reads differently once you know both, because it tells what happened to the marriage that ends the first and fills the second. Everything else stands alone.
Read in publication order, the books fall into three periods: the journalist and fiction writer before 2006, the memoirist of 2006 to 2015, and the alternation since between novels and nonfiction. Committed appears in the UK as Committed: A Love Story, which is why some lists count it twice.
A reading path
1. Eat Pray Love (2006)
2. Committed (2010)
3. The Last American Man (2002)
4. The Signature of All Things (2013)
5. All the Way to the River (2025)
The Book That Carries Her Name but Is Not Hers
Beyond the 9 key books: 1 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Edited and introduced
1
1 book · 2012
- 2012At Home on the Rangea 1947 cookbook by her great-grandmother, which Gilbert found in her mother’s attic and had reissued by McSweeney’s with her introduction
The years · 1969–2025
Quick facts about Elizabeth Gilbert
- Known for
- The 2006 memoir Eat Pray Love, which sold more than twelve million copies and became a film with Julia Roberts, and for writing about creativity as something anyone can practise
- 1969
- Born in Waterbury, Connecticut
- 1993
- Esquire publishes her story “Pilgrims”
- 2006
- Eat Pray Love
- 2015
- Big Magic
- Born
- 18 July 1969, Waterbury, Connecticut
- Education
- New York University
- Before the books
- Magazine journalism for Spin, GQ and The New York Times Magazine; three times a National Magazine Award finalist
- Finalist
- National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, for The Last American Man (2002)
- Film
- Eat Pray Love (2010), with Julia Roberts
- Honours
- Time 100 most influential people, 2008
The red mark is 2006: Eat Pray Love, the memoir that made her name.
How Elizabeth Gilbert Writes: Reporting, Then Confession
Gilbert trained as a magazine journalist, and the habit shows in more of her books than the memoirs suggest. The Last American Man is reported biography, built on time spent with Eustace Conway and the people around him. Committed turns a personal problem, a marriage she did not want, into research on the history of marriage, and The Signature of All Things rests on the botany and exploration of the nineteenth century.
Her memoirs are built around a stated question rather than a chronology: what she wants after a divorce, why she should marry, what love costs. Eat Pray Love is divided into three sections, one per country, and told as 108 short tales, the number of beads on a prayer string. That direct, confiding voice is why the books are so often shelved as self-help, and Big Magic makes the address to the reader explicit.
The late work is harder. All the Way to the River keeps the confessional voice but drops the redemptive arc, and includes things about herself that the earlier books would not have allowed. For writers on the same ground, from Cheryl Strayed to Anne Lamott, see Authors like Elizabeth Gilbert.
Watch
Elizabeth Gilbert on your elusive creative genius
Gilbert’s 2009 TED talk on the pressure that followed Eat Pray Love, and the older idea of genius as something a person has rather than is, which she took up again in Big Magic.
Frequently asked questions about Elizabeth Gilbert’s books
How many books has Elizabeth Gilbert written?
Nine of her own, published between 1997 and 2025: Pilgrims, Stern Men, The Last American Man, Eat Pray Love, Committed, The Signature of All Things, Big Magic, City of Girls and All the Way to the River. You will often see ten, because many lists include At Home on the Range (2012), a cookbook written by her great-grandmother that Gilbert introduced.
What are Elizabeth Gilbert’s books in order?
Pilgrims (1997), Stern Men (2000), The Last American Man (2002), Eat Pray Love (2006), Committed (2010), The Signature of All Things (2013), Big Magic (2015), City of Girls (2019) and All the Way to the River (2025). Only Committed needs to be read after another book: it continues directly from Eat Pray Love.
Where should I start with Elizabeth Gilbert?
Eat Pray Love (2006) if you want the book she is known for. Big Magic (2015) if you would rather have her argument about creativity without the personal story. If you want to see her as a reporter, The Last American Man (2002) was a National Book Award finalist.
What is Elizabeth Gilbert’s most famous book?
Eat Pray Love (2006), by a long way. It has sold more than twelve million copies in over thirty languages, spent well over a year on The New York Times bestseller list and was filmed in 2010 with Julia Roberts.
Is At Home on the Range an Elizabeth Gilbert book?
Not really. It is a 1947 cookbook by Margaret Yardley Potter, Gilbert’s great-grandmother. Gilbert found it in her mother’s attic, had it reissued by McSweeney’s in 2012 and wrote the introduction. Because it is catalogued under her name, it turns up in her bibliography and pushes the usual total from nine to ten.
Did Elizabeth Gilbert write fiction as well as memoir?
Yes. Pilgrims (1997) is a short-story collection, Stern Men (2000) is a novel about lobstermen in Maine, and The Signature of All Things (2013) and City of Girls (2019) are historical novels. The Last American Man (2002) is reported biography.
Is Eat Pray Love a true story?
Yes. It is a memoir of the year Gilbert spent in Italy, India and Indonesia after her divorce. Committed (2010) continues the story, and All the Way to the River (2025) tells how her marriage to Felipe, the man she met in Bali, ended.
What is Elizabeth Gilbert’s newest book?
All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation, published on 9 September 2025 and chosen for Oprah’s Book Club. It is a memoir about her relationship with Rayya Elias, who died in January 2018.
Which Elizabeth Gilbert books won awards?
The Last American Man (2002) was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Pilgrims (1997) was a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist and won a Pushcart Prize, and The Signature of All Things (2013) was longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. As a magazine journalist she was three times a finalist for the National Magazine Award.
Why did Elizabeth Gilbert cancel The Snow Forest?
The Snow Forest was a novel set in Siberia in the middle of the twentieth century, announced for February 2024. In June 2023, after Ukrainian readers objected to a book set in Russia while the war continued, Gilbert said in a video that it was “not the time for this book to be published” and withdrew it. The Authors Guild responded that authors should not be pressured to withhold books. No new date has been announced.
Footnotes
- Elizabeth Gilbert — Wikipedia
- Elizabeth Gilbert — Penguin Random House
- The Last American Man — Elizabeth Gilbert (official site)
- At Home on the Range — McSweeney’s
- Elizabeth Gilbert halts release of a new book — NPR, 2023
- Oprah Winfrey selects Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir — AP, 2025
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 perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it’s just terrified.”
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic (2015)
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