Philip Pullman was born in Norwich, England, but spent most of youth in Rhodesia, Australia, London, and Wales, and to this day retains a love of travel. As a child, Pullman enjoyed reading Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, finding the "combination of rich, incantatory language and mysterious evocative pictures . . . irresistible." He attended Oxford University, finishing in 1968 with a degree in English, and has been a teacher there since 1973. His young adult writings are supplemented by a novel for adults, Galatea (1978) and one for younger children, Count Karlstein (1982), as well as several plays, Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Sumatran Devil, an adaptation of Frankenstein (1990), and an adaptation of The Three Musketeers.

Pullman enjoys music and keeps a saxophone and a guitar in the shed where he writes. In a questionnaire from his publisher, he stated that one thing he would like to accomplish...