John Bointon Priestley – the author of realistic novels and plays

Priestley was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, where his father was a schoolmaster. Like Richard Aldington he volunteered to participate in World War I. But he was not broken by witnessing the horrors of the war and did not accept the side of the lost generation. He served in the Devonshire Regiment, after which he studied at Cambridge University. Then he went to London in 1922 to work as a reviewer and critic, and published some critical essays such as The English Comic Characters (1925) and English Humour (1929). In 1927 he published two novels; Adam in Moonshine and The Old Dark House. He established his reputation as a novelist with The Good Compan­ions (1929) which was both a popular and a critical success. In this novel, written much in Dickens' tradition, the narrative unfolds in a series of letters describing the adventures of a troupe of traveling players in England during the 1920's. His "little men", or "people from the street" usually win because they stand higher morally and spiritually than upper-middle class representatives.

His novels often contain serious social criticism and attest to Priestley's breadth of experience and depth of sympathy. His Angel Pavement (1930) portrays the anguish and fear of people isolated in a city and Walk in the City (1936) reveals both the gaiety and the sadness of ordinary people.

In 1932 John Priestley entered the field of playwriting with Dangerous Corner, a notable success in which he unmasks hypocri­sy and selfishness of the "respectable" people who just pretend to look honest, friendly, kind and decent but when time pressed they show their real nature. When all the truth comes out about his wife Frieda, who was the mistress of his late brother Martin, about Betty, a former prostitute and her husband Gordon, a psychopath who pretend to be a loving newly-wed couple, Robert, the central character retreats to another room and kills himself. But the au­thor shows that his suicide is the farce. When the curtains go up the audience see him alive as ever. The idea is that nothing has changed, people again will lie, will deceit each other, and will pretend as they did before.

This play was followed by Eden End (1934), Time and the Conway (1937), / Have Been Here Before (1937), and An Inspector Call (1946). Priestley wrote mote than forty plays and comedies in which the playgoing public delights.

He traveled twice to the former Soviet Union - in 1931, and then right after the end of World War II. He visited many cities, such as Stalingrad (now Volgograd), Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Kyiv, and other places. He admired the courage of the people with which they fought to free their county from the enemies, industry, kindness, generosity and hospitality of Ukrainians.

Among his later works are realistic novels Journey Down a Rain­bow (1955) It's an Old Country (1967), and The Image Men (1968-69). It's an Old Country is a story about Tom Adamson, an Austral­ian, who comes to England hoping to find his father there. He kept hustling around England encountering representatives of higher society - labourists and conservatives. All of them are symptoms of the time which stopped going on. He is critical about the life in this old country, but decides to stay here, not because he believes in its present and future. He is attracted by football, bingo, and a country house. The readers feel bitter irony of the author.

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