John Milton's Paradise Lost has an established influence on His Dark Materials and so have a few other pieces of classical literature.
But we can't stop there. This article will discuss a modern novelist artwork which has most probably had an impact on His Dark Materials.
Pullman admitted that he has "stolen ideas from every book" he had ever read. I suggest that one of these books is famous For Whom the Bell Tolls by Nobel prize-winner Ernest Hemingway.
The novel takes place in the middle of the Spanish civil war during the first half of the XXth century. The American Robert Jordan has joined forces with the Spanish communist rebels and has a special task to perform: detonate a bridge vital to the imperial forces in order to allow a feigned attack of the rebels to strike.
He is sent behind the enemy lines to the partisans in the mountains who are to help him in his task. But the people there do not welcome his presence; it jeopardizes their being unnoticed and in order to accomplish his task they would have to give up all the little secureness they had.
Robert is faced with many problems but the most difficult problem proves to be of another kind: he, who has always ignored women in war in order to concentrate on his duty falls in love with the girl Maria who lives with the partisans and who returns his love passionately.
The novel was written under the impression of the atrocities of Guernica; Hemingway had visited Spain during the civil war and witnessed many things he wrote about with his own eyes. The atmosphere of the novel is particularely tense and realistic.
So what has this to do with His Dark Materials?
First of all, the writing style of the two novels is amazingly similar. The same stylistic elements are used to emphasize certain points. And like in His Dark Materials the different characters are particularly well illustrated and are evoked very lively.
A special resemblance applies to the chapter "Alamo Gulch" in The Subtle Knife: the scene of Lee Scoresby and Hester's fight against the Muscovit forces could have been taken from For Whom the Bell Tolls. Whole phrases have an exact counterpart in the novel, such as There was a great deal of pain waiting to spring on him, but it hadn't raised the courage yet, and that thought gave him the strength to focus his mind on shooting again.
in The Subtle Knife, which happens to the leg instead on the arm in For Whom the Bell Tolls.
And last but not least the ending of both books is utterly artifical and nearly destroys the grandiose atmosphere of the novels.
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