Priestley, J(ohn) B(oynton)

Priestley, J(ohn) B(oynton) (1894–1984), English dramatist, novelist, and critic. His first play, a dramatization of his own best-selling novel The Good Companions (London and NY, 1931) undertaken in collaboration with Edward Knoblock, was followed by Dangerous Corner (London and NY, 1932), an ingenious play in which a chance remark at a dinner party produces a chain of revelations which lead eventually to a suicide; but the play then returns to its beginnings and the words pass unnoticed. After Laburnum Grove (1933; NY, 1935) and Eden End (1934; NY, 1935), the latter mingling gentle melancholy and rich humour in a way Priestley never again achieved, came two excellent plays influenced by Dunne's An Experiment with Time, Time and the Conways and I Have Been Here Before (both 1937; NY, 1938), the former being particularly effective, with its second act set 20 years later than the first and third. These ‘time-plays’ were followed by a rollicking farce, When We Are Married (1938; NY, 1939), which concerns three Yorkshire couples who find after many years that their marriages are not legal. In his next two plays, Music At Night (also 1938) and Johnson over Jordan (1939), in which Ralph Richardson gave a fine performance, Priestley sought to give modern drama a new depth, but the technical means he employed were not to the taste of the public, though They Came to a City (1943), an earnest left-wing political tract, proved surprisingly popular in the West End. Another play in the style of Dangerous Corner, An Inspector Calls (1946; NY, 1947), in which Richardson again appeared, was followed in 1947 (NY, 1948) by one of Priestley's best plays, The Linden Tree, in which Lewis Casson and Sybil Thorndike played an academic and his wife confronted at a family reunion by the contrasting ideologies of their three adult children. His later plays, such as Home is Tomorrow (1948) and Summer Day's Dream (1949), proved less memorable. Dragon's Mouth (1952; NY, 1955) and The White Countess (1954) were written in collaboration with his third wife, the archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes, while his last plays included Mr Kettle and Mrs Moon (1955), The Glass Cage (1957), and a dramatization of Iris Murdoch's novel A Severed Head (1963; NY, 1964) in collaboration with the author. He was the first President of the International Theatre Institute.