J. B. Priestley

[Eric]

We don't seem to have a thread for the English author J. B. Priestley (1894-1984).

The Wikipedia article is quite thorough:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Priestley

At one time, he was mentioned quite a lot in literary circles, but he seems to have gone out of fashion. Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, he managed in his time to write no fewer than 26 novels, and some plays as well - at least a dozen of those.

His most famous novels are "The Good Companions" (1929) and "Angel Pavement" (1930), although he carried on writing novels until the 1960s. The former novel is set in Yorkshire, the latter in London.

Priestley was a paradoxical figure. He was a staunch socialist, and some of the cabinet during WWII thought him too left-wing. Yet he was a prolific broadcaster during that same war. He helped found the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament after the war. George Orwell had him on a list of people who were a bit suspect because of their left-wing leanings. But somehow he survived politically and also managed to write a large number of books.

Anyway, if any of you have read anything by him, do offer opinions.

[Threetrees]

Priestley has never been a socialist. He was a progressive liberal as far as I can judge. He stood in the middle. As a sober and responsible writer he couldn't but show life as it was and masterly added humour and farce to the situations. He was a dreamer, an artist of characters, a great story-teller.

Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.
J. B. Priestley

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.
J. B. Priestley

I would recommend as a starting or re-reading:

Fantasy & Science Fiction
The Thirty-first of June, by J. B. Priestley (1961)

The novella is subtitled: A Tale of True Love, Enterprise and Progress, in the Arthurian and Ad-Atomic Ages. Priestley worried that the critical spirit of his "comic invention" made it unsuitable for readers under eleven and over ninety. "It must be funny because I could hear my secretary laughing in the next room, as she copied the story."

Plays
When We Are Married, by J. B. Priestley (1938)

In the heart of Northern England, three respectable couples, married on the same day, at the same church, and by the same vicar, join to celebrate 25 years of blissful matrimony. Or so they think… The happy celebrations are brought to a sudden halt by a shocking revelation – these pillars of the community are not quite as respectably married as they thought they were. As the home truths fly like confetti and conjugal rites turn to farcical fights, an evening of sparkling comic mayhem erupts. With a photographer from the local paper due to arrive any second, a missing housekeeper and a doorbell that wont stop ringing, can the three couples keep a lid on their embarrassing secret? Penned in 1938, this is a classic comedy that is a blessed union of laughs and surprises.

[Eric]

Has anyone on this forum actually read any Priestley? If so, which specific works?

[Eric]

I've not started "The Good Companions" yet, but the novel appeals to me because I, like Priestley, come from Yorkshire, so I can actually read the chunks of dialect dialogue, which may confound people from other parts of the English-speaking world. Priestley invented a town in Yorkshire called Bruddersford, whose name is a mixture of two real towns, Bradford and Huddersfield. This is the same area of the world where the poet Simon Armitage hails from.