Drama:
The Good Companions, pr. 1931 (adaptation of his novel; with Edward Knoblock)
Dangerous Corner, pr., pb. 1932
The Roundabout, pr. 1932
Laburnum Grove, pr. 1933
Eden End, pr., pb. 1934
Cornelius, pr., pb. 1935
Duet in Floodlight, pr., pb. 1935
Bees on the Boat Deck, pr., pb. 1936
Spring Tide, pr., pb. 1936 (with George Billam)
People at Sea, pr., pb. 1937
Time and the Conways, pr., pb. 1937
I Have Been Here Before, pr., pb. 1937
Music at Night, pr. 1938
Mystery at Greenfingers, pr., pb. 1938
When We Are Married, pr., pb. 1938
Johnson over Jordan, pr., pb. 1939
The Long Mirror, pr., pb. 1940
Goodnight, Children, pr., pb. 1942
They Came to a City, pr. 1943, pb. 1944
Desert Highway, pr., pb. 1944
The Golden Fleece, pr. 1944
How Are They at Home?, pr., pb. 1944
An Inspector Calls, pr. 1946
Ever Since Paradise, pr. 1946
The Linden Tree, pr. 1947
The Rose and Crown, pb. 1947 (one act)
The High Toby, pb. 1948 (for puppet theater)
Home Is Tomorrow, pr. 1948
The Plays of J. B. Priestley, pb. 1948-1950 (3 volumes)
Summer Day’s Dream, pr. 1949
Bright Shadow, pr., pb. 1950
Seven Plays of J. B. Priestley, pb. 1950
Dragon’s Mouth, pr., pb. 1952 (with Jacquetta Hawkes)
Treasure on Pelican, pr. 1952
Mother’s Day, pb. 1953 (one act)
Private Rooms, pb. 1953 (one act)
Try It Again, pb. 1953 (one act)
A Glass of Bitter, pb. 1954 (one act)
The White Countess, pr. 1954 (with Hawkes)
The Scandalous Affair of Mr. Kettle and Mrs. Moon, pr., pb. 1955
These Our Actors, pr. 1956
The Glass Cage, pr. 1957
The Pavilion of Masks, pr. 1963
A Severed Head, pr. 1963 (with Iris Murdoch; adaptation of Murdoch’s novel)
An Inspector Calls, and Other Plays, pb. 2001
Long Fiction:
Adam in Moonshine, 1927
Benighted, 1927
Farthing Hall, 1929 (with Hugh Walpole)
The Good Companions, 1929
Angel Pavement, 1930
Faraway, 1932
I’ll Tell You Everything, 1933 (with George Bullett)
Wonder Hero, 1933
They Walk in the City: The Lovers in the Stone Forest, 1936
The Doomsday Men: An Adventure, 1938
Let the People Sing, 1939
Blackout in Gretley: A Story of– and for–Wartime, 1942
Daylight on Saturday: A Novel About an Aircraft Factory, 1943
Three Men in New Suits, 1945
Bright Day, 1946
Jenny Villiers: A Story of the Theatre, 1947
Festival at Farbridge, 1951 (pb. in U.S. as Festival)
Low Notes on a High Level: A Frolic, 1954
The Magicians, 1954
Saturn over the Water: An Account of His Adventures in London, South America, and Australia by Tim Bedford, Painter, Edited with Some Preliminary and Concluding Remarks by Henry Sulgrave and Here Presented to the Reading Public, 1961
The Thirty-first of June: A Tale of True Love, Enterprise, and Progress in the Arthurian and Ad-Atomic Ages, 1961
The Shape of Sleep: A Topical Tale, 1962
Sir Michael and Sir George: A Tale of COMSA and DISCUS and the New Elizabethans, 1964 (also known as Sir Michael and Sir George: A Comedy of New Elizabethans)
Lost Empires: Being Richard Herncastle’s Account of His Life on the Variety Stage from November, 1913, to August, 1914, Together with a Prologue and Epilogue, 1965
Salt Is Leaving, 1966
It’s an Old Country, 1967
The Image Men: “Out of Town” and “London End,” 1968
The Carfitt Crisis, 1975
Found, Lost, Found: Or, The English Way of Life, 1976
My Three Favorite Novels, 1978
Short Fiction:
The Town Major of Miraucourt, 1930
Going Up: Stories and Sketches, 1950
The Other Place, and Other Stories of the Same Sort, 1953
The Carfitt Crisis, and Two Other Stories, 1975
Screenplay:
Last Holiday, 1950
Poetry:
The Chapman of Rhymes, 1918
Nonfiction:
Brief Diversions: Being Tales, Travesties, and Epigrams, 1922
Papers from Lilliput, 1922
I for One, 1923
Figures in Modern Literature, 1924
Fools and Philosophers: A Gallery of Comic Figures from English Literature, 1925 (pb. in U.S. as The English Comic Characters)
George Meredith, 1926
Talking: An Essay, 1926
The English Novel, 1927, 1935, 1974
Open House: A Book of Essays, 1927
Thomas Love Peacock, 1927
Too Many People, and Other Reflections, 1928
Apes and Angels: A Book of Essays, 1928
The Balconinny, and Other Essays, 1929 (pb. in U.S. as The Balconinny, 1931)
English Humour, 1929, 1976
The Lost Generation: An Armistice Day Article, 1932
Self-Selected Essays, 1932
Albert Goes Through, 1933
English Journey: Being a Rambling but Truthful Account of What One Man Saw and Heard and Felt and Thought During a Journey Through England During the Autumn of the Year 1933, 1934
Four-in-Hand, 1934
Midnight on the Desert: A Chapter of Autobiography, 1937 (pb. in U.S. as Midnight on the Desert: Being an Excursion into Autobiography During a Winter in America, 1935-1936, 1937)
Rain upon Godshill: A Further Chapter of Autobiography, 1939
Britain Speaks, 1940
Postscripts, 1940 (radio talks)
Out of the People, 1941
Britain at War, 1942
British Women Go to War, 1943
The Man-Power Story, 1943
Here Are Your Answers, 1944
The New Citizen, 1944
Letter to a Returning Serviceman, 1945
Russian Journey, 1946
The Secret Dream: An Essay on Britain, America, and Russia, 1946
The Arts Under Socialism: Being a Lecture Given to the Fabian Society, with a Postscript on What Government Should Do for the Arts Here and Now, 1947
Theatre Outlook, 1947
Delight, 1949
Journey Down a Rainbow, 1955 (with Jacquetta Hawkes)
All About Ourselves, and Other Essays, 1956
The Writer in a Changing Society, 1956
The Art of the Dramatist: A Lecture Together with Appendices and Discursive Notes, 1957
The Bodley Head Leacock, 1957
Thoughts in the Wilderness, 1957
Topside: Or, The Future of England, a Dialogue, 1958
The Story of Theatre, 1959
Literature and Western Man, 1960
William Hazlitt, 1960
Charles Dickens: A Pictorial Biography, 1962
Margin Released: A Writer’s Reminiscences and Reflections, 1962
The English Comic Characters, 1963
Man and Time, 1964
The Moments, and Other Pieces, 1966
All England Listened: J. B. Priestley’s Wartime Broadcasts, 1968
Essays of Five Decades, 1968 (Susan Cooper, editor)
Trumpets over the Sea: Being a Rambling and Egotistical Account of the London Symphony Orchestra’s Engagement at Daytona Beach, Florida, in July-August, 1967, 1968
The Prince of Pleasure and His Regency, 1811-1820, 1969
Anton Chekhov, 1970
The Edwardians, 1970
Over the Long High Wall: Some Reflections and Speculations on Life, Death, and Time, 1972
Victoria’s Heyday, 1972
The English, 1973
Outcries and Asides, 1974
A Visit to New Zealand, Particular Pleasures: Being a Personal Record of Some Varied Arts and Many Different Artists, 1974
The Happy Dream: An Essay, 1976
Instead of the Trees, 1977 (autobiography)
Children’s/Young Adult Literature:
Snoggle, 1972
Edited Texts:
Essayist Past and Present: A Selection of English Essays, 1925
Tom Moore’s Diary: A Selection, 1925
The Book of Bodley Head Verse, 1926
The Female Spectator: Selections from Mrs. Eliza Heywood’s Periodical, 1744-1746, 1929
Our Nation’s Heritage, 1939
Scenes of London Life, from “Sketches by Boz” by Charles Dickens, 1947
The Best of Leacock, 1957
Four English Novels, 1960
Four English Biographies, 1961
Adventures in English Literature, 1963
An Everyman Anthology, 1966
John Boynton Priestley, the prolific author of nearly two hundred volumes of essays, novels, and plays, is twentieth century Great Britain’s best example of the writer as a down-to-earth, no-nonsense professional. He began his career hoping to become a man of letters in the eighteenth century fashion, exploring any subject that interested him in whatever genre struck him as most suitable. Eventually he regretted having written so much, understanding that critics sometimes ignore the too-industrious writer as they champion instead the slimmer output of more predictable writers who repeat themselves in a single literary vein.
J. B. Priestley
Born in Bradford, the wool-merchandizing hub of northern England, Priestley was reared by a socialist schoolmaster father and a kindly stepmother in an environment that encouraged an interest in the arts. He took advantage of the town’s theaters, music halls, and libraries–resources which offered him artistic and intellectual stimulation of the highest order then available in England before World War I. The proximity of Bradford to the Yorkshire Dales, an area of extraordinary beauty, awakened in him an interest in nature as well. After leaving school, he became a clerk in the wool trade but in fact spent most of his time writing pieces on widely varying subjects for the local papers and even some London magazines.
An idyllic existence in what Priestley later remembered as a golden world came to an end with the war. Enlisting at age twenty, he was wounded in France and later gassed. Although the war itself does not figure in his writing, its horror remained with him all of his life; he mourned his countrymen’s disparaging of their former values and ideals. He aimed his work at reminding Englishmen of what they once had been and what they yet could be, were they to work in harmony, in community, in building a better world.
That work began in earnest after the war and three years at the University of Cambridge, when Priestley moved to London and became a writer for various newspapers and periodicals and a reader for a publishing firm. He augmented the income by which he cared for his growing family by publishing books of essays and literary criticism. While he was making his mark as a writer, he was by no means financially secure. Security, modest wealth in fact, came his way when he tried his hand at the novel. His fourth novel, The Good Companions, was Priestley’s breakthrough; it is an affectionate look at a band of not-too-accomplished performers making the rounds of provincial music halls who come to realize that a changing world is no longer receptive to the innocent fare they offer. It became a runaway best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic and, translated into many languages, established Priestley’s reputation around the world. He followed The Good Companions with even more ambitious works, darker in tone and peopled with extraordinary characters–idealistic heroes and heroines, sinister confidence men, comic grotesques–like those of Charles Dickens. A number of well-received novels followed.
The success of his novels enabled Priestley to enter the more precarious world of the theater, to which he had been attracted as a youth when he had contemplated a career as an actor. After learning the dramatist’s craft by collaborating on a stage adaptation of The Good Companions, Priestley wrote a soundly structured play by himself. Dangerous Corner initially drew tepid reviews but became an enormous success once it was championed by James Agate, the most influential drama critic of the day. Priestley himself later surmised that there was no playhouse in the entire world that had not housed a production of his first play. Despite its lack of depth and its perfunctory characterization, the highly diverting piece about some young people involved in at times unpleasant, even sordid relationships, suggested the directions his later plays would take. Dangerous Corner makes clear that persons who act irresponsibly in their own interests can accomplish nothing, that only those who are honest with one another, who support one another as they work in harmony, can make life truly worthwhile. Priestley gave the unhappy characters of Dangerous Corner the opportunity to try again, to rebuild their world, by ending the play with a time shift, an end that becomes a new beginning. The play demonstrated for the first time Priestley’s abiding interest in time theories, which would become the basis of some of his better, later plays.
Priestley’s best and most lasting work for the theater revealed his affinity for the work of Russian dramatist Anton Chekhov. Eden End, which takes place just before World War I, and The Linden Tree, set shortly after World War II, both deal, as does Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (1904), with a society in flux. The weaker will be unable to make the transition to a new era; the hearty and courageous will adjust, even triumph. Even more significant in jarring an ultraconservative British theater out of its complacency were the innovative, expressionistic plays Music at Night (first published in Three Plays in 1943) and Johnson over Jordan. In the former, a group of disparate characters come together as all humankind in a Jungian ritual bonding as they listen to the first performance of a piece of music. In the latter an English Everyman reexamines his wasted life after his death. In a journey outside time, outside space, he laments his lost joys and wasted opportunities and comes at last to a recognition of the ultimate worth of humankind.
Early in his career as a dramatist Priestley had solved the problems he had encountered in the sometimes uneasy relationships with directors and actors by forming his own production company. Eventually he decided to abandon a changing theater which was beginning to attract audiences out of touch with his own ideals. The brief essays and short fiction works such as “The Carfitt Crisis,” as well as social documents such as The Edwardians and a last volume of autobiography, were gentler forms for the aging Priestley. Active until the brief illness that caused his death in 1984, he would have been more pleased could he have known that his popularity would survive him. Priestley’s novels are widely read in Great Britain, the nation that sometimes disappointed him but never lost his love, and his plays are frequently revived in theaters throughout the country as well as in London’s West End.