Anthologies
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| An anthology of War Poetry. | 1942 | Buy |
| Some Things Fierce and Fatal. | 1957 | Buy |
| Open at Your Own Risk | 1975 | Buy |
| Agatha Christie | 1977 | Buy |
| John Creasey’s Crime Collection, 1977 | 1977 | Buy |
| Verdict of Thirteen | 1979 | Buy |
| Great Detectives | 1981 | Buy |
| The Scoop and Behind the Screen | 1983 | Buy |
| New Poetry 9: An Arts Council Anthology | 1983 | Buy |
| Tales of the Uncanny | 1983 | Buy |
| Deadly Arts | 1985 | Buy |
| The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes | 1987 | Buy |
| 100 Great Detectives, Or, the Detective Directory | 1991 | Buy |
| Fifty Best Mysteries | 1993 | Buy |
| Great Cases of Scotland Yard, Volume Two | 1997 | Buy |
| Murder Most Merry | 2002 | Buy |
| Murder in Midsummer: Classic Mysteries for the Holidays | 2019 | Buy |
Francis Quarles Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Murder! Murder! | 1961 | N/A |
| Francis Quarles Investigates: Tales for the Connoisseur of Detective Fiction | 1965 | Buy |
| The Detections of Francis Quarles | 2006 | Buy |
Inspector Bland Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Immaterial Murder Case | 1945 | Buy |
| The Narrowing Circle | 1954 | N/A |
| Bland Beginning | 1949 | Buy |
| A Man Called Jones | 1949 | Buy |
Inspector Crambo Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Narrowing Circle | 1954 | Buy |
| The Gigantic Shadow / The Pipe Dream | 1958 | Buy |
Joan Kahn-Harper Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| The Man Who Killed Himself | 1967 | Buy |
| The Man Whose Dreams Came True | 1968 | Buy |
| The Players and The Game | 1972 | Buy |
| The Plot Against Roger Rider | 1973 | Buy |
| The Man Who Lost His Wife | 1977 | Buy |
| Sweet Adelaide | 1980 | Buy |
| The Detling Murders / The Detling Secret | 1982 | Buy |
| The Man Who Hated Television / Did Sherlock Holmes Meet Hercule? | 1995 | Buy |
Julian Symons Poems Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Poem | 1938 | N/A |
| Confusions About X | 1939 | Buy |
| The Other Cheek | 1939 | N/A |
| Pub | 1940 | N/A |
| End of a Year | 1940 | N/A |
| Spring | 1942 | N/A |
| Hart Crane | 1942 | N/A |
| Eleven Meetings | 1942 | N/A |
| The Clock | 1942 | N/A |
| The Second Man | 1943 | Buy |
| A Reflection on Auden | 1973 | Buy |
Murderous Christmas Stories Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Murder under the Christmas Tree | 2016 | Buy |
| Murder on Christmas Eve | 2017 | Buy |
| Murder on Christmas Eve: Classic Mysteries for the Festive Season | 2017 | N/A |
| A Very Murderous Christmas | 2018 | Buy |
| A Very Murderous Christmas: Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season | 2018 | N/A |
| Murder at Christmas | 2019 | Buy |
| Murder at Christmas: Ten Classic Crime Stories for the Festive Season | 2019 | N/A |
| Murder in Midwinter | 2020 | Buy |
| Murder on a Winter’s Night | 2021 | Buy |
| Murder in the Falling Snow | 2022 | Buy |
Non-Fiction
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| A London Letter | 1940 | N/A |
| Louis MacNeice | 1940 | N/A |
| Obscurity and Dylan Thomas | 1940 | N/A |
| Restoration Comedy | 1945 | N/A |
| Strategy in War - and Peace | 1947 | N/A |
| Low-Down on the Left | 1947 | N/A |
| The Big Five | 1947 | N/A |
| A Pack of Cards | 1947 | N/A |
| Live Words Among the Dead | 1947 | N/A |
| Between Two Beards | 1947 | N/A |
| Pick Your Poet | 1948 | N/A |
| What Makes a Criminal? | 1948 | N/A |
| Antidote, Tonic - or Escape? | 1948 | N/A |
| The Biggest Problem in the World | 1948 | N/A |
| A Bird in the Bush | 1948 | N/A |
| Who Is Our Best Read Novelist? | 1949 | N/A |
| They Took the Long Jump to Freedom | 1949 | N/A |
| Which Is the True Russia? | 1949 | N/A |
| These Make Good Holiday Reading | 1949 | N/A |
| I Call It Detective Fever | 1949 | N/A |
| The Poet and the Theatre | 1950 | N/A |
| Genius, Crank or Dabbler? | 1950 | N/A |
| The Man Who Went to Moscow | 1950 | N/A |
| Nation Looking for a Cure-All | 1950 | N/A |
| The Man Who Hated the Poor … | 1950 | N/A |
| Three Ways to See a Country | 1950 | N/A |
| Snail Tea for Breakfast? | 1950 | N/A |
| Shavians Without Knowing it | 1950 | N/A |
| Cat Naps and a High Jump | 1950 | N/A |
| How to Get Away from It All | 1950 | N/A |
| Sophocles in Three Scenes | 1950 | N/A |
| Poets’ Plight | 1950 | N/A |
| When the Balloons Went Up | 1950 | N/A |
| Charles Dickens | 1951 | Buy |
| Novels of Four Nations | 1951 | N/A |
| The Last of the Edwardian Giants … | 1951 | N/A |
| Thomas Carlyle The Life and Ideas of Prophet | 1952 | Buy |
| Bloomsburyites - They Started It All | 1954 | N/A |
| Dodgers, Scroungers & a Captain at Sea | 1954 | N/A |
| Arthur James Cook (Gamblers with Fate) | 1954 | N/A |
| Whitaker Wright (Gamblers with Fate) | 1954 | N/A |
| Horatio Bottomley;: A biography | 1955 | Buy |
| Murder - Plus Good Writing | 1955 | N/A |
| Kruschev Said ‘Come and See What We’re Like’ | 1955 | N/A |
| What It’s Like to Be ‘On the Run’ | 1955 | N/A |
| They Worked So Hard to Be Gay | 1955 | N/A |
| Did Spiritual Exercises Really Cure Eva Barton?. | 1957 | N/A |
| One Thing They All Said: SUBUD Makes You into a Different Person | 1957 | N/A |
| Frank Cousins under the Microscope | 1958 | N/A |
| The Enigma of Frank Cousins | 1958 | N/A |
| Cousins Can't Make Them Cry | 1958 | N/A |
| A Reasonable Doubt | 1960 | Buy |
| England’s pride: The story of the Gordon Relief Expedition | 1966 | Buy |
| Crime and Detection : an illustrated history from 1840. | 1966 | Buy |
| Bloody Murder | 1972 | Buy |
| Between the Wars | 1972 | Buy |
| Notes From Another Country | 1972 | Buy |
| The Thirties | 1973 | Buy |
| Buller’s Campaign | 1974 | Buy |
| The Angry 30’s | 1976 | Buy |
| A Touch of Fowles' Play | 1977 | N/A |
| The Tell-Tale Heart: The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe | 1978 | Buy |
| Critical Observations | 1981 | Buy |
| Agatha Christie, the Art of Her Crimes | 1981 | Buy |
| A.J.A. Symons, His Life And Speculations | 1986 | Buy |
| Makers of the New | 1987 | Buy |
| Conan Doyle: Portrait of an Artist | 1989 | Buy |
Sheridan Haynes Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| A Three-Pipe Problem | 1975 | Buy |
| The Kentish Manor Murders | 1988 | Buy |
Short Stories/Novellas
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Stealing the Picture | 1954 | N/A |
| The Santa Claus Club | 1960 | N/A |
| A Mystery in Spain | 1961 | N/A |
| ‘Twixt the Cup and the Lip | 1965 | Buy |
| A Theme for Hyacinth | 1967 | Buy |
| Eight Minutes to Kill | 1971 | Buy |
| Two Brothers | 1985 | Buy |
| Portraits Of The Missing | 1991 | Buy |
| Does literature exist? The Lurcy Lecture Amherst College March 1992. | 1993 | Buy |
| A Julian Symons Sherlockian Duet | 2000 | Buy |
Short Story Collections
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| How to Trap a Crook | 1977 | Buy |
| The Tigers of Subtopia and Other Stories | 1984 | Buy |
| Somebody Else | 1990 | N/A |
Standalone Novels
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Selected Writings of Samuel Johnson Falcon Prose Classics | 1949 | Buy |
| The 31st Of February | 1950 | Buy |
| The Clue in the Book | 1952 | Buy |
| The Broken Penny | 1953 | Buy |
| The Paper Chase / Bogue’s Fortune | 1956 | Buy |
| The Colour Of Murder | 1957 | Buy |
| The Progress of a Crime | 1960 | Buy |
| The Killing Of Francie Lake / The Plain Man | 1962 | Buy |
| Carlyle: Selected Works, Reminiscences and Letters | 1963 | Buy |
| The End of Solomon Grundy | 1964 | Buy |
| The Belting Inheritance | 1965 | Buy |
| Death’s Darkest Face | 1966 | Buy |
| CRIME A Pictorial History of Crime 1840 to the Present | 1966 | Buy |
| Critical Occasions | 1966 | Buy |
| The Blackheath Poisonings | 1978 | Buy |
| The Modern Crime Story | 1980 | Buy |
| Agatha Christie Cover Story | 1982 | Buy |
| The Name of Annabel Lee | 1983 | Buy |
| Crime and Detection Quiz | 1983 | Buy |
| The Remarkable Daniel Dunglas Home | 1983 | N/A |
| 1948 and 1984: The second Orwell memorial lecture | 1984 | Buy |
| Dashiell Hammett | 1985 | Buy |
| The Criminal Comedy of the Contented Couple / A Criminal Comedy | 1986 | Buy |
| The General Strike | 1987 | Buy |
| Mortal Consequences | 1987 | Buy |
| Conan Doyle: Portrait of an Artist | 1989 | Buy |
| The Thirties and the Nineties | 1990 | Buy |
| Something Like a Love Affair | 1993 | Buy |
| Criminal Practices | 1994 | Buy |
| Playing Happy Families | 1995 | Buy |
| A Sort Of Virtue | 1996 | Buy |
Julian Symons (1912-1994) was a British author who moved between crime fiction, literary criticism, biography, and poetry. His mystery novels, including Inspector Bland and Francis Quarles detective stories, earned him the Edgar Award and the Gold Dagger from the Crime Writers’ Association. He was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1982.
Beyond fiction, Symons was a prolific literary critic and historian. Bloody Murder (1972), his survey of crime and detective fiction, became a definitive reference work. He also wrote biographies, edited anthologies, and published poetry throughout a career spanning six decades.