Sharpe

On the data. The publisher's own numbering contradicts publication order, which is worth knowing before you buy anything. HarperCollins numbers the current editions chronologically, so Sharpe's Tiger is Book 1 on the spine despite being the fifteenth written, sixteen years after the first. That is why this page shows both axes. The television series is unusual in shape: sixteen feature length films rather than a conventional episodic run, broadcast in two hour slots in short annual seasons. One source counts sixteen films and another counts eighteen entries, and both are right, because the two revival films were each transmitted in two ninety minute parts. Twelve of the sixteen adapt novels and four are original screenplays: Sharpe's Mission, Sharpe's Justice, Sharpe's Challenge and Sharpe's Peril. A fifth, Sharpe's Gold, adapts nothing but the title, and Cornwell's own verdict on it is that the story on the programme bears absolutely no resemblance to the story in the book. The films also adapt the novels out of sequence: they run up the story to 1813 across films three to five, then drop back to 1810 for films six to eight. The most interesting thing about the gaps, though, is that they are mostly not gaps. When the last 1990s film aired in May 1997 Cornwell had published thirteen Sharpe novels plus Sharpe's Tiger, and the series had adapted twelve of those thirteen, skipping only Sharpe's Devil. Everything now missing, the whole India trilogy and Trafalgar, Prey, Havoc, Escape, Fury, Command, Storm and Assassin, was written after the television series had finished, and partly because of its success. Traffic also ran the other way: Cornwell was impressed enough by Sean Bean that he retconned Sharpe's upbringing to Yorkshire to account for the accent and stopped mentioning his black hair, and Bean was not the original casting, since Paul McGann had filmed roughly two weeks before injuring his knee playing football. Two riflemen who feel like book characters, Harris and Perkins, were invented for television, as was Major-General Ross, who stands in for two different novel characters. Sharpe's Challenge and Sharpe's Peril are not adaptations and not a reboot: they are a nine years later revival of the same continuity with the same two leads, set in India in 1817, a slot that falls after Sharpe's Assassin in 1815 and before Sharpe's Devil in 1820, and one Cornwell has never written into. A few dates are contested across sources: Sharpe's Command is 2023 in the United Kingdom and 2024 in the United States, Sharpe's Havoc is given as 2002 by one source and 2003 by two, and the two Daily Mail short stories are variously dated 1994 and 1995 before being collected in 2003. One ordering conflict is worth naming: one reference places Sharpe's Christmas before Sharpe's Storm, while the more consistent reading, supported by Cornwell's own remark that Storm ends without resolving its campaign because he had already written Sharpe as being elsewhere that Christmas, puts Christmas after Storm. On what comes next, Sharpe's Storm was published in October 2025 in the United Kingdom and December 2025 in the United States, and no further novel is announced. Cornwell has never declared the series closed and has repeatedly resumed it after appearing to stop: he originally intended eleven books to match Hornblower and ended at Waterloo, then continued; stopped after Sharpe's Devil in 1992 and returned; stopped after Sharpe's Fury in 2006 for fifteen years and returned with Sharpe's Assassin. Treat the series as open ended but unscheduled. No new adaptation has been commissioned or confirmed.

On your progress. Checkmarks are saved on this device and are tied to permanent title IDs, not to list positions, so new episodes, titles, and whole franchises can be added later without disturbing anything you've already marked. Use Sync & backup to move progress to another device.