Gerald Durrell's Books: A Complete List

Gerald Durrell was born in India in 1925, lost his father young and moved back to the UK with his mother, two older brothers and older sister, and the whole family headed out to sunny Corfu when he was ten. There he indulged his lifelong obsession with nature, keeping an enormous variety of pets and constantly observing and learning from the world around him. He was to continue this passion, and keen observational habits, into the rest of his life. Forced back to England by the second World War, a teenaged Gerald Durrell was forced to accept that keeping large animals was not practical in a suburban family home, and he pursued experience in a zoo, to allow him to go on collecting expeditions.

Gerald Durrell:
The Authorized Biography

Then followed many years of wildlife collecting trips around the world, in which we meet hundreds of incredible species of all sizes and during which time he became increasingly dissatisfied with the state of zoos. At last, he founded his own zoo, based on the principles of conservation, education and research.

He began to publish his stories in magazines and radio broadcasts, in later years setting out to publish actual books. He actually hated writing and wrote mostly to fund his collecting trips and his zoo - which he set up to be one of the first real conservation orientated zoos in the world, at a time when most zoos were of the dreadful concrete box and no breeding programme variety.

The subtle difference between us is that he loves writing and I don't. To me it's simply a way to make money which enables me to do my animal work, nothing more. (in comparison to his brother, Lawrence Durrell, a famous writer).

Rosy Is My Relative

But his love for animals, almost all animals (famously, he only ever encountered one or two species he couldn't bring himself to like), shines through.

Unfortunately he died in 1995. His last book was The Aye-Aye and I: A Rescue Mission in Madagascar, published in 1992. His humour, insight and activism probably had the greatest impact on conservation that any one person could have, not only through the species he personally saved, but the people he inspired and trained - the 'Durrell's Army' - and the awareness raised through the vast number of people around the world who have picked up his books.

The Whispering Land

This is a chronological list of all his published autobiographies. He did not necessarily publish them in the order that they occurred, and some books feature anecdotes from several time periods.

Are you looking for a Zoo story or a fiction novel?
If you're looking for a certain time period in his life, or a specific type of story (e.g. setting up his zoo) then keep reading to the categories below, which are organised by chronological content, rather than published date. You will also find his fiction and other miscellaneous works after the autobiographical books.

Availability, Reprints and Format
Many books were only published in the UK, with a few being republished in the USA, often under a slightly different name. Several titles have recently been republished, but most are only to be found second hand. They have almost all been reprinted at least once, originally as tiny paperbacks photos of animals on the front, then with cartoonish covers, later as respectable hardbacks. Some titles have been reprinted five times - or more, if we count audio and ebook versions!

How to Shoot an Amateur Naturalist

Kindle ebooks: Almost the entire backlist has recently been republished for Kindles (current exceptions on Amazon.com are The Whispering Land, The Garden of the Gods (which is included in The Corfu Trilogy though), How to Shoot an Amateur Naturalist , Durrell in Russia and The Best of Gerald Durrell. Many of Gerald Durrell's books are also available to download as audiobooks from Audible Audio [download on Amazon.co.uk here]. Please note that the list of available ebooks varies between Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, and that the kindle link isn't always present on the book's product page (so you'll have to search Amazon for it, though I've tried to provide links to the UK ones which are harder to find).

The links lead to either Amazon UK or US, depending where you are reading this page from and what is available.

• Overloaded Ark (Faber and Faber, 1953)
  
• Three Singles to Adventure(Three Tickets to Adventure) (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954)
  
• The Bafut Beagles (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954)
  
• The New Noah (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1955) (Written for children)
  
• The Drunken Forest (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956)
  
• My Family and Other Animals (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956)
  
• Encounters with Animals (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1958)
  
• A Zoo in My Luggage (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1960)
  
• The Whispering Land (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961)
  
• Menagerie Manor (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964)
  
• Two In the Bush (Collins, 1966)
  
• Birds, Beasts, and Relatives (Collins, 1969)
  
• Fillets of Plaice (Collins, 1971)
  
• Catch Me a Colobus (Collins, 1972)
  
• Beasts in My Belfry (A Bevy of Beasts) (Collins, 1973)
  
• The Stationary Ark (Collins, 1976)
  
• Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons: A Journey to the Flora and Fauna of a Unique Island (Collins, 1977)
  
• The Garden of the Gods (Fauna and Family) (Collins, 1978)
  
• The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium (The Picnic and Other Inimitable Stories) (Collins, 1979)
  
• Ark on the Move (Coward McCann, 1982)
  
• How to Shoot an Amateur Naturalist (Collins, 1984)
  
• Gerald and Lee Durrell in Russia (with Lee Durrell) (MacDonald (Publisher) (UK) / Simon and Schuster (U.S.), 1986)
  
• The Ark's Anniversary (Collins, 1990)
  
• Marrying Off Mother: And Other Stories (Harper-Collins, 1991)
  
• The Aye-Aye and I: A Rescue Mission in Madagascar (also known as The Aye-Aye And I: A Rescue Journey to Save One of the World's Most Intriguing Creatures from Extinction (Harper-Collins, 1992)
  
• The Best of Gerald Durrell (edited by Lee Durrell after his death) (Harper-Collins, 1996)

-20

Novels

• Rosy Is My Relative (Collins, 1968) (adults)
  
• The Mockery Bird (The Billion Dollar Brain) (Collins, 1981) (YA)
  
• The Donkey Rustlers
  (Collins, 1968) (children)
  
• The Talking Parcel (Battle for Castle Cockatrice) (Collins, 1974) (children)

Short Story Collections

• The New Noah (Rupert Hart-Davis, 1955) (autobiographical nonfiction; animal collecting for children)
  
• Fillets of Plaice (Collins, 1971) (autobiographical nonfiction)
  
• The Stationary Ark (Collins, 1976) (nonfiction essays on zoos)
  
• The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium (The Picnic and Other Inimitable Stories) (Collins, 1979) (autobiographical nonfiction and fiction)
  
• Marrying Off Mother: And Other Stories (Harper-Collins, 1991) (semi-autobiographical fiction)
  

Illustrated Children's Books

• The Fantastic Flying Journey: An Adventure in Natural History (Conran Octopus, 1987) (older children)
  
• The Fantastic Dinosaur Adventure: A New Adventure in Natural History (Conran Octopus, 1989) (older children)
  
• Keeper (Michael O'Mara Books, 1990) (younger children)
  
• Toby the Tortoise (Michael O'Mara Books, 1991) (younger children)
  
• Puppy Tales (Andrex, 1993) (board books)
  • Puppy's Beach Adventure
    
  • Puppy"s Field Day
    
  • Puppy's Pet Pals
    
  • Puppy's Wild Time
  
  

Nonfiction: Guides to Zoos and Animal Collecting for Children

• Island Zoo: The Animals a Famous Collector Couldn't Part With (photographs by W. Suschitzky) (Collins, 1961)
  
• Look At Zoos (Hamish Hamilton, 1961)
  
• Amateur Naturalist: A Practical Guide to the Natural World (with Lee Durrell) (Hamish Hamilton (UK) / Alfred A. Knopf (U.S.), 1982) (all ages)
  
  

• A Brush with Animals by Ralph Thompson (1963) (a hardback collection of illustrations from one of the artists who worked with Gerald Durrell)
  
• Beasts in My Bed by Jacquie Durrell (1967) (autobiography by his first wife)
  
• Intimate Relations by Jacquie Durrell (1976) (autobiography by his first wife)
  
• Okavango Adventure: In Search of Animals in Southern Africa by Jeremy Mallinson (1973) (Similar collecting stories from someone trained by Gerald Durrell)
  
• Earning Your Living with Animals by Jeremy Mallinson (1975)
  
• Himself and Other Animals: Portrait of Gerald Durrell by David Hughes (1976) (a biography)
  
• Chimps with everything: The story of Twycross Zoo by Molly Badham & Maureen Lawless (1979) (foreword by Gerald Durrell)
  
• The Facts About a Zoo: Featuring the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust by Jeremy Mallinson (1980) (about Jersey Zoo and the Trust)
  
• State of the Ark: An Atlas of Conservation in Action by Lee Durrell (1986) (about Jersey Zoo and the Trust)
  
• Ourselves and Other Animals: From the TV Series with Gerald and Lee Durrell by Peter Evans (1987)
  
• Travels in Search of Endangered Species by Jeremy Mallinson (1989)
  
• My Favourite Animal Stories by Gerald Durrell (an anthology of stories by other writers)
  
• Gerald Durrell's Army by Edward Whitley (1992) (a biography and a look at all the people he trained)
  
• Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Portfolio Two (1993) (foreword by Gerald Durrell)
  
• Jambo: A Gorilla's Story by Richard Johnstone-Scott (1995) (about a famous gorilla at Jersey Zoo)
  
• In The Footsteps of Lawrence Durrell and Gerald Durrell in Corfu (1935-39) by Hilary Whitton Paipeti (1998) (a guidebook around Corfu)
  
• Gerald Durrell - The Authorized Biography by Douglas Botting (1999) (a biography)
  
• Durrelliania: An illustrated checklist of inscribed books of Lawrence Durrell and Gerald Durrell and associated publications, letters and notes in the Library of Jeremy J. C. Mallinson, edited by Jeremy Mallinson (1999) (a bibliography of the brothers' writings)

There are some excellent videos about Gerald Durrell that have not been released overseas, and can only be ordered from Amazon.co.uk. These were all originally released on VHS and have recently been made available on DVD. They include an early BBC television series based on his childhood in Corfu, and a documentary series about his life, the life of Jambo the gorilla, and his last collecting trip to Madagascar, three years before his death.

An early and excellent television series based on his book of the same name. The more recent film is available in the US as well.

Features on his life and work, starring John Cleese and David Attenborough.:

All about Gerald Durrell, his life, his conservation work and his zoo.

Following the story of the famous gorilla from his Jersey Zoo.

A documentary of his last collecting trip to capture the elusive Aye-aye. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Buy them all together!

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
My Family and Other Animals is Gerald Durrell's story of his childhood on the Greek island of Corfu. Full of the most eccentric characters - from his sibling...The Fantastic Flying Journey
The Fantastic Flying Journey is a picture book written by renowned conservationist Gerald Durrell and illustrated in full colour by Graham Percy. I love this...The Talking Parcel written by Gerald Durrell
*** "If the words are not looked after and given exercise, they simply fade away and vanish, poor little things, said Parrot. That's my job. Once a year...The Isle of Jersey
I was born and raised on the tiny British island of Jersey. It wasn't until I moved to London at the age of 17 that I realized just how lucky I was to grow u...gerald-durrell-books