John Barth was born in Cambridge, Maryland, and briefly studied "Elementary Theory and Advanced Orchestration" at Juilliard before attending Johns Hopkins University, receiving a B.A. in 1951 and an M.A. in 1952 (for which he wrote a thesis novel, The Shirt of Nessus).
He was a professor at Penn State University (1953-1965), University at Buffalo (1965-1973), Boston University (visiting professor, 1972-1973), and Johns Hopkins University (1973-1995) before he retired in 1995.
Fiction
The Floating Opera (1957)
The End of the Road (1958)
The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)
Giles Goat-Boy, or, The Revised New Syllabus (1966)
Lost in the Funhouse: Fiction for Print, Tape, Live Voice (stories) (1968)
Chimera (three linked novellas) (1972)
LETTERS (1979)
Sabbatical: A Romance (1982)
The Tidewater Tales (1987)
The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor (1991)
Once upon a Time: A Floating Opera (memoirish novel) (1994)
On with the Story (stories) (1996)
Coming Soon!!!: A Narrative (2001)
The Book of Ten Nights and a Night: Eleven Stories (2004)
Where Three Roads Meet (three linked novellas) (2005)
Non-Fiction
The Friday Book (1984)
Further Fridays (1995
