If you wish to set a default sort order you can "tweak" Calibre.
- Preferences/Tweaks (under Advanced at the bottom)
Then scroll down the list of settings until you find : "Specify columns to sort the booklist by on startup"
There you would set the sort order to your preferences. There are easy to follow instructions, but what I THINK you want is something along the lines of:
sort_columns_at_startup = [('authors',0),('pubdate',0)]
That would list the books by Author in ascending order, then multiple books by ascending date...change the 0s to 1s if you want either/both to be descending.
Don't forget to click the button "Apply Changes to this Tweak" at the bottom of the window BEFORE you click the "Apply" button or your changes will be lost.
Cheers!