In addition to several collections of short stories, Penelope Gilliatt has published novels, collections of essays (including film reviews, profiles, interviews, and conversations), an award-winning screenplay, an opera libretto, and a study of comedy, which is an analysis of the comedic styles of famous comedians.

The “jet set,” that chic world of international sophisticates, has found in Penelope Gilliatt one of its compelling literary representatives. Her talents as a purveyor of elitist wit and liberal sensibility have been prominently recognized, sometimes skeptically and even negatively, but, most generally, with acclaim and high praise. Scrupulous readers of her work, such as Anne Tyler and Anthony Burgess, appreciate her profound modernity, whereas the less astute see primarily, or exclusively, slickness and glibness. Her cinematic writing style was effectively conducive to her script for the John Schlesinger film Sunday Bloody Sunday, the 1971 film which received prizes as the best screenplay of the year from the National Society of Film Critics and the New York Film Critics, to be followed in 1972 by a prize from the Writers Guild of Britain and a nomination for an Academy Award. In 1972, Gilliatt also received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an election to the Royal Society of Literature.