Katana VentraIP

His Dark Materials

His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights (1995; published as The Golden Compass in North America), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1995 for Northern Lights and the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year for The Amber Spyglass. In 2003, the trilogy was ranked third on the BBC's The Big Read poll.[1]

For other uses, see His Dark Materials (disambiguation).

Author

Philip Pullman

United Kingdom

English

Fantasy novel

Scholastic

1995–2000

Print (hardback & paperback)

The Book of Dust

Although His Dark Materials has been marketed as young adult fiction, and the central characters are children, Pullman wrote with no target audience in mind. The fantasy elements include witches and armoured polar bears; the trilogy also alludes to concepts from physics, philosophy, and theology. It functions in part as a retelling and inversion of John Milton's epic Paradise Lost,[2] with Pullman commending humanity for what Milton saw as its most tragic failing, original sin.[3] The trilogy has attracted controversy for its criticism of religion.


The London Royal National Theatre staged a two-part adaptation of the trilogy in 2003–2004. New Line Cinema released a film adaptation of Northern Lights, The Golden Compass, in 2007. A HBO/BBC television series based on the novels was broadcast between November 2019 and February 2023.[4][5]


Pullman followed the trilogy with three novellas set in the Northern Lights universe: Lyra's Oxford (2003), Once Upon a Time in the North (2008), and Serpentine (2020). La Belle Sauvage, the first book in a new trilogy titled The Book of Dust, was published on 19 October 2017; the second book of the new trilogy, The Secret Commonwealth, was published in October 2019. Both are set in the same universe as Northern Lights.

a wild 12-year-old girl, has grown up in the fictional Jordan College, Oxford. She prides herself on her capacity for mischief, especially her ability to lie, earning her the epithet "Silvertongue" from Iorek Byrnison. Lyra has a natural ability to use the alethiometer, which is capable of answering any question when properly manipulated and read.

Lyra Belacqua

is Lyra's dæmon. Like all children's dæmons, he changes form from one creature to another frequently. When Lyra reaches puberty, he assumes the permanent form of a pine marten.

Pantalaimon

a sensible, morally conscious, assertive 12-year-old boy from our world. He becomes the bearer of the subtle knife. Will is independent and responsible for his age, having looked after his mentally ill mother for several years. Will's dæmon is Kirjava.

Will Parry

The is the first angel to have emerged from Dust. He told the later-arriving angels that he created them and the universe, but this is a lie. Although he is the overarching antagonist of the series, the Authority remains in the background; he makes his only appearance late in The Amber Spyglass. The Authority has grown weak and transferred most of his powers to his regent, Metatron.

Authority

ostensibly Lyra's uncle, is actually her father. He opens a rift between the worlds in his pursuit of Dust. His dream of establishing a Republic of Heaven leads him to use his power to raise a grand army from across the multiverse to rise up in rebellion against the forces of the Church.

Lord Asriel

is the beautiful and manipulative mother of Lyra, and the former lover of Lord Asriel. She serves the Church by kidnapping children for research into the nature of Dust, in the course of which she separates them from their dæmons - a procedure known as intercision. Initially hostile to Lyra, she realises that she loves her daughter and seeks to protect her from agents of the Church who want to kill Lyra. Her dæmon is a golden monkey with a cruel streak.

Marisa Coulter

Asriel's principal adversary, was a human, Enoch, in biblical times, but was later transfigured into an angel. The Authority, his health declining, appointed Metatron his Regent. As Regent, Metatron has implanted the monotheistic religions across the universes.

Metatron

- or Sir Charles Latrom, CBE, as he is known as in Will Parry's world-is a minor character in Northern Lights, but the main antagonist in The Subtle Knife. He is an old Englishman, appearing to be in his sixties.

Lord Carlo Boreal

is a physicist and former nun from Will's world. She meets Lyra during Lyra's first visit to Will's world. Lyra provides Mary with insight into the nature of Dust. Agents of the Church force Mary to flee to the world of the Mulefa. There she constructs the amber spyglass, which enables her to see the otherwise invisible Dust. Her purpose is to learn why Dust, which Mulefa civilisation depends on, is flowing out of the universe.

Mary Malone

is a massive armoured bear. An armoured bear's armour is his soul. Iorek's armour is stolen, so he becomes despondent. With Lyra's help he regains his armour, his dignity, and his kingship over the armoured bears. In gratitude, and impressed by her cunning, he dubs her "Lyra Silvertongue". A powerful warrior and blacksmith, Iorek repairs the Subtle Knife when it shatters. He later goes to war against The Authority and Metatron.

Iorek Byrnison

a rangy Texan, is a balloonist. He helps Lyra in an early quest to reach Asriel's residence in the North, and he later helps John Parry reunite with his son Will.

Lee Scoresby

is the beautiful queen of a clan of Northern witches. Her snow-goose dæmon Kaisa, like all witches' dæmons, can travel much farther apart from her than the dæmons of humans, without feeling the pain of separation.

Serafina Pekkala

heads Jordan College, part of Oxford University in Lyra's world. Helped by other Jordan College employees, he is raising the supposedly orphaned Lyra. Faced with difficult choices that only later become apparent, he tries unsuccessfully to poison Lord Asriel.

The Master of Jordan

is the kitchen boy at Jordan College and Lyra's best friend.

Roger Parslow

is Will's father. He is an explorer from our world who discovered a portal to Lyra's world and became the shaman known as Stanislaus Grumman or Jopari, a variation of his original name.

John Parry

The —Lord Roke, Madame Oxentiel, Chevalier Tialys, and Lady Salmakia—are tiny people (a hand-span tall) with poisonous heel spurs.

Four Gallivespians

: A Gyptian woman whose son, Billy Costa, is abducted by the Gobblers. She rescues Lyra from Mrs Coulter and takes her to John Faa. Ma Costa nursed Lyra when she was a baby.

Ma Costa

: The King of all the Gyptians. He journeys with Lyra to the North with his companion Farder Coram. Faa and Costa rescue Lyra when she runs away from Mrs Coulter. Then they take her to Iorek Byrnison.

John Faa

is a priest sent by the Church to assassinate Lyra.

Father Gomez

is an alethiometrist of the Consistorial Court of Discipline, but a sluggish reader of the device.

Fra Pavel Rašek

is a rebel angel who, with his lover Baruch, join in Will's journey to find the captured Lyra. Near the end of the story, he saves their lives by killing Father Gomez.

Balthamos

are four-legged wheeled animals; they have one leg in front, one in back, and one on each side. Their "wheels" are large, round, hard seed-pods from trees; an axle-like claw at the end of each leg grips a seed-pod.

Mulefa

All humans in Lyra's world, including witches, have a dæmon. It is the physical manifestation of a person's 'inner being', soul or spirit. It takes the form of a creature (moth, bird, dog, monkey, snake, etc.) and is usually the opposite sex to its human counterpart. The dæmons of children have the ability to change form - from one creature to another - but during a child's puberty, their dæmon "settles" into a permanent form, which reflects the person's personality. When a person dies, the dæmon dies too. Armoured bears, cliff ghasts, and other creatures do not have dæmons. An armoured bear's armour is his soul.

Influences[edit]

Pullman has identified three major literary influences on His Dark Materials: the essay On the Marionette Theatre by Heinrich von Kleist,[13] the works of William Blake, and, most important, John Milton's Paradise Lost, from which the trilogy derives its title.[14] In his introduction, he adapts a famous description of Milton by Blake to quip that he (Pullman) "is of the Devil's party and does know it".


Critics have compared the trilogy with C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, which Pullman despises,[15][16] and also with such fantasy books as Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle.[17][18]

Awards and recognition[edit]

The first volume, Northern Lights, won the Carnegie Medal for children's fiction in the UK in 1995.[19] In 2007, the judges of the CILIP Carnegie Medal for children's literature selected it as one of the ten most important children's novels of the previous 70 years. In an online June 2007 poll, it was voted the best Carnegie Medal winner in the 70-year history of the award, the Carnegie of Carnegies.[20][21] The Amber Spyglass won the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year award, the first time that such an award has been bestowed on a book from their "children's literature" category.[22]


The trilogy came third in the 2003 BBC's Big Read, a national poll of viewers' favourite books, after The Lord of the Rings and Pride and Prejudice.[1]


On 19 May 2005, Pullman attended the British Library in London to receive formal congratulations for his work from culture secretary Tessa Jowell "on behalf of the government".[23] On 25 May 2005, Pullman received the Swedish government's Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for children's and youth literature (sharing it with Japanese illustrator Ryōji Arai).[24] Swedes regard this prize as second only to the Nobel Prize in Literature; it has a value of 5 million Swedish Kronor or approximately £385,000. In 2008, The Observer cites Northern Lights as one of the 100 best novels.[25] Time magazine in the US included Northern Lights (The Golden Compass) in its list of the 100 Best Young-Adult Books of All Time.[26] In November 2019, the BBC listed His Dark Materials on its list of the 100 most influential novels.[27]

Adaptations[edit]

Radio[edit]

BBC Radio 4 broadcast a radio play adaptation of His Dark Materials in 3 episodes, each lasting 2.5 hours. It was first broadcast in 2003, and re-broadcast in both 2008-9 and in 2017, and was and released by the BBC on CD and cassette. Cast included Terence Stamp as Lord Asriel and Lulu Popplewell as Lyra.[48]


Also in 2003 a radio dramatisation of Northern Lights was made by RTÉ (Irish public radio).[49]

Philip Pullman