Priestley's England: J. B. Priestley and English CultureAnnotation Priestleys England is the first full-length academic study of J B Priestley - novelist, playwright, screen-writer, journalist and broadcaster, political activist, public intellectual and popular entertainer, one of the makers of twentieth-century Britain, and one of its sharpest critics. From his scathing analysis of a slump-stricken nation in the best-selling English Journey, to his popular wartime broadcasts which paved the way to 1945 and the welfare state, his post-war critique of Admass and the Cold War (he was a co-founder of CND), and his continual engagement with the question of Englishness, Priestley addressed the key issues of the century from a radical standpoint in fiction, journalism and plays which appealed to a wide audience and made him one of the most successful writers of his day, in a career which spanned the 1920s and the 1980s. Priestleys England explores the cultural, literary and political history of twentieth-century Britain through the themes which preoccupied Priestley throughout his life: competing versions of Englishness; tradition, modernity, and the decline of industrial England; Americanisation, mass culture and Admass; cultural values and broadbrow culture; consumerism and the decay of the public sphere; the loss of spirituality and community in the nervous excitement, the frenzy, the underlying despair of our century. It argues that Priestley has been unjustly neglected for too long: we have a great deal to learn both from this extraordinary, multi-faceted man, and from the English radical tradition he represented. This book will appeal to all those interested in the culture and politics of twentieth-century Britain, in the continuing debates over Englishness to which Priestley made such a key contribution, and in the life and work of one of the most remarkable and popular writers of the past century. |
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Contents
Acknowledgements page | 1 |
Bruddersford and beyond | 35 |
Englands and Englishness | 76 |
This new England | 105 |
Priestleys war | 140 |
New Jerusalem and beyond | 166 |
Bibliography | 194 |
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Common terms and phrases
1941 Committee Admass American Angel Pavement Angus Calder argued artists audience Blackpool Bradford Bright Day Britain British broadcast Bruddersford Cambridge chapter cinema City Companions contemporary countryside creative critical critique Deep England democracy democratic documentary Edwardian Empire England English Journey Essays F. R. Leavis factory fiction film George Orwell Gracie Fields H. V. Morton Heinemann highbrow Hollywood Ibid industrial J. B. Priestley John kind Labour landscape later Leavis Listener literary literature live London Manchester Margin mass middle-class middlebrow modernity music-hall narrative national character newspaper novel novelist ordinary organisation Originally published Orwell Oxford University Press Party Penguin play political popular culture Postscripts postwar Priestley's published New Statesman radical radio Rain readers Routledge rural Sing social society spirit Stanley Baldwin suburban theme things town tradition turn Victorian Virginia Woolf wartime Wonder Hero working-class writing wrote young