He was born, the son of a tailor and a housemaid, in Folkestone, and had little formal education. He left school at the age of nine to work as an errand boy for a Jewish trouser maker in Whitechapel during the period of the Jack the Ripper murders.

In the early 1920s, and still unpublished, he was in Oxford and a leading light of a literary group, the New Elizabethans, who met in a pub to read Elizabethan drama. W. B. Yeats sometimes attended the meetings. At this period he met Richard Hughes and Edgell Rickword, amongst others.

• Adam & Eve & Pinch Me (collection) 1921
• Clorinda Walks in Heaven (collection) 1922
• Hips and Haws (poetry collection) 1922
• The Black Dog and Other Stories (collection) 1923
• Fishmonger's Fiddle: Tales (collection) 1925
• The Field of Mustard (collection) 1926
• Yokohoma Garland & Other Poems (poetry collection) 1926
• Pelaga & Other Poems (poetry collection) 1926
• "Count Stefan" (individual story) 1928
• Silver Circus (collection) 1928
• The Collected Poems OF A. E. Coppard (poetry collection) 1928
• "The Gollan" (individual story) 1929
• "The Higgler" (individual story) 1930
• "Easter Day" (individual poem) 1931
• "These Hopes of Heaven" (individual poem) 1934
• Cherry Ripe, Poems (poetry collection) 1935
• "The Man From Kilsheelan" (individual story) 1920
• "Pink Furniture" (individual story) 1930
• "The Hundredth Story of A. E. Coppard" (individual story) 1931
• Nixey's Harlequin (collection) 1931
• Fare Please! (collection) 1931
• "Cheefoo" (individual story) 1932
• Crotty Shinkwin and the Beauty Spot (two stories) 1932
• "Rummy, That Noble Game" (individual story) 1932
• Dunky Fitlow (collection) 1933
• Ring the Bells of Heaven (collection) 1933
• "Emergency Exit" (individual story) 1934
• "Good Samaritan" (individual story) 1934
• Pink Furniture (collection) 1935
• Polly Oliver (collection) 1935
• Ninepenny Flute (collection) 1937
• "Tapster's Tapestry" (individual story) 1938
• You Never Know, Do You? (collection) 1939
• Ugly Anna (collection) 1944
• Fearful Pleasures (collection) 1946
• Selected Tales (collection) 1946
• The Dark Eyed Lady - Fourteen Tales (collection) 1947
• "A Carol" (individual poem) 1947
• Collected Tales (collection) 1948
• Lucy in Her Pink Coat (collection) 1954
• It's Me, O Lord! (autobiography) 1957
• Selected Stories (collection) 1972
• The Collected Tales of A. E. Coppard (collection) 1976
• Simple Day: Selected Poems (poetry collection) 1978
• The Higgler and Other Stories (collection) 1991
• The Man from the Caravan and Other Stories (collection) 1999
• Father Raven and Other Tales (collection) 2006

Works Specifically About A. E. Coppard:

• Fabes, Gilbert H., The First Editions of A. E. Coppard, A. P. Herbert and Charles Morgan, 1933 London: Myers.
• Saul, George Brandon, A.E. Coppard: His Life and Poetry,1932, University of Pennsylvania, Ph.D. dissertation.
• Schwartz, Jacob with foreword and notes by A. E. Coppard, A Bibliography of A. E. Coppard - The Writings of Alfred Edgar Coppard, 1931.