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Elizabeth Gilbert books in order

Elizabeth Gilbert is an American journalist and bestselling author of historical fiction and non-fiction novels. She is best known for writing the international bestseller, Eat Pray Love (2006).

Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, she studied political science at New York University, where she also worked on her writing skills in her spare time.

Upon graduating, Elizabeth spent the next years traversing the country, working in bars, diners and ranches, and noting down her experiences.

This adventure ultimately became her first book, PILGRIMS–a short story collection.

Her biggest breakthrough however came in 2006 when she wrote the international bestselling memoir Eat Pray Love, which was an account of her solo trip around the world after a heartbreaking divorce.

The book has been translated into over 30 languages, selling more than 12 million copies across the globe.

Besides being a novelist, Elizabeth also worked as a journalist during her early years. She worked with publications such as Spin, GQ and The New York Times Magazine, and was even a three-time finalist for The National Magazine Award.

Elizabeth currently spares her time between New York City, rural New Jersey, and everywhere else.

More about Elizabeth Gilbert

Genres: Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Non-fiction

Born: 1969

United States

Website: https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/

Non Series

  • Stern Men (2000)
  • The Signature of All Things (2013)
  • City of Girls (2019)

Collections

  1. Pilgrims (1997)

Non-fiction

  1. The Last American Man (2002)
  2. Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (2006)
  3. Committed: A Love Story (2009)
  4. At Home on the Range (2012)
  5. The Best American Travel Writing 2013 (2013)
  6. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (2015)
  7. Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It (2016)
Collections

Detailed book overview

Non Series

Stern Men

Off the coast of Maine, Ruth Thomas is born into a feud fought for generations by two groups of local lobstermen over fishing rights for the waters that lie between their respective islands. 

At eighteen, she has returned from boarding school-smart as a whip, feisty, and irredeemably unromantic-determined to throw over her education and join the "stern men" working the lobster boats.

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
First Release: 2000
ISBN: 978-0143114697
Publisher: Penguin
The Signature of All Things

Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker—a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry’s brilliant daughter, Alma (who inherits both her father’s money and his mind), ultimately becomes a botanist of considerable gifts herself. 

As Alma’s research takes her deeper into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact opposite direction—into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist—but what unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of this world and the mechanisms behind all life.

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
First Release: 2013
ISBN: 978-0143125846
Publisher: Riverhead Books
City of Girls

In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant, crumbling midtown theater called the Lily Playhouse. 

There Vivian is introduced to an entire cosmos of unconventional and charismatic characters, from the fun-chasing showgirls to a sexy male actor, a grand-dame actress, a lady-killer writer, and no-nonsense stage manager. But when Vivian makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal, it turns her new world upside down in ways that it will take her years to fully understand. 

Ultimately, though, it leads her to a new understanding of the kind of life she craves - and the kind of freedom it takes to pursue it. It will also lead to the love of her life, a love that stands out from all the rest.

Now eighty-nine years old and telling her story at last, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life - and the gusto and autonomy with which she approached it. "At some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed all the time," she muses. "After that, she is free to become whoever she truly is."

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
First Release: 2019
ISBN: 978-1594634741
Publisher: Riverhead Books

Collections

Pilgrims

When Elizabeth Gilbert's story collection Pilgrims first appeared in 1997, it immediately announced her compelling voice, her comic touch, and her amazing ear for dialogue. Brave and unforgettable, the heroes of Pilgrims are sure to strike a chord with fans old and new.

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
First Release: 1997
ISBN: 978-0143113379
Publisher: Riverhead Books

Non-fiction

The Last American Man

In this rousing examination of contemporary American male identity, acclaimed author and journalist Elizabeth Gilbert explores the fascinating true story of Eustace Conway. In 1977, at the age of seventeen, Conway left his family's comfortable suburban home to move to the Appalachian Mountains. 

For more than two decades he has lived there, making fire with sticks, wearing skins from animals he has trapped, and trying to convince Americans to give up their materialistic lifestyles and return with him back to nature. 

To Gilbert, Conway's mythical character challenges all our assumptions about what it is to be a modern man in America; he is a symbol of much we feel how our men should be, but rarely are.

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
First Release: 2002
ISBN: 978-0142002834
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

In her early thirties, Elizabeth Gilbert had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want—husband, country home, successful career—but instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed by panic and confusion. 

This wise and rapturous book is the story of how she left behind all these outward marks of success, and set out to explore three different aspects of her nature, against the backdrop of three different cultures: pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and on the Indonesian island of Bali, a balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence.

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
First Release: 2006
ISBN: 978-0143038412
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Committed: A Love Story

At the end of her memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian living in Indonesia. The couple swore eternal love, but also swore (as skittish divorce survivors) never to marry. 

However, providence intervened in the form of a U.S. government ultimatum: get married, or Felipe could never enter America again. Told with Gilbert's trademark humor and intelligence, this fascinating meditation on compatibility and fidelity chronicles Gilbert's complex and sometimes frightening journey into second marriage, and will enthrall the millions of readers who made Eat, Pray, Love a number one bestseller.

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
First Release: 2009
ISBN: 978-0143118701
Publisher: Riverhead Books
At Home on the Range

A cookbook far ahead of its time, Margaret Yardley Potter’s At Home on the Range, originally published in 1947, was rediscovered by the author Elizabeth Gilbert—who just so happens to be the author’s great-granddaughter. 

Gilbert’s “Gima” was no ordinary housewife: at a time when the American dinner table was hurtling towards homogeny, Potter espoused the importance of farmers’ markets and ethnic food (when pizza was considered ethnic), derided preservatives and culinary shortcuts, and lustily celebrated her epicurean adventures. Part scholar, part crusader, and always throwing parties, Potter could not but be a source of Gilbert’s own love of food, and her warm, infectious prose.

NB: This is the work of Margaret Yardley Potter, originally published in 1947, presented by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
First Release: 2012
ISBN: 978-1938073687
Publisher: McSweeney's
The Best American Travel Writing 2013

Number-one New York Times best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love and Committed: A Love Story, Elizabeth Gilbert transports readers to far-flung locales with this collection of the year’s lushest and most inspiring travel writing.

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
First Release: 2013
ISBN: 978-0547808987
Publisher: Mariner Books
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

Readers of all ages and walks of life have drawn inspiration and empowerment from Elizabeth Gilbert’s books for years. Now this beloved author digs deep into her own generative process to share her wisdom and unique perspective about creativity. 

With profound empathy and radiant generosity, she offers potent insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. 

Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the “strange jewels” that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
First Release: 2015
ISBN: 978-1594634727
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Eat Pray Love Made Me Do It

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love has become a worldwide phenomenon, empowering millions of readers to set out on paths they never thought possible, in search of their own best selves. Here, in this candid and captivating collection, nearly fifty of those readers—people as diverse in their experiences as they are in age and background—share their stories. The journeys they recount are transformative—sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, but always deeply inspiring.

Eat Pray Love helped one writer to embrace motherhood, another to come to terms with the loss of her mother, and yet another to find peace with not wanting to become a mother at all. One writer, reeling from a difficult divorce, finds new love overseas; another, a lifelong caregiver, is inspired to take an annual road trip, solo. A man leaves seminary, embraces his sexual identity, and forges a new relationship with God. A woman goes to divinity school and grapples with doubt and belief. 

One writer’s search for the perfect pizza leads her to New Zealand and off-the-grid homesteading, while another, in overcoming an eating disorder, redefines her relationship not only with food but with herself. Some writers face down devastating illness and crippling fears, and others step out of their old lives to fulfill long-held dreams of singing, acting, writing, teaching, and learning.

Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
First Release: 2016
ISBN: 978-0399576775
Publisher: Riverhead Books