简介

约翰·博因顿·普里斯特利 英国小说家、批评家、戏剧家。1894年9月13日生于约克郡布雷德福德的教师家庭。1914至1919年间在陆军中服役。后就学于剑桥，在英国文学、现代史及政治学方面成绩优异。

1922年定居伦敦，为《星期六评论》等杂志写评论。早期著作主要是文学传记和评论集。代表作有《乔治·梅瑞狄斯》（1926）、《托马斯·皮科克》（1927）、《英国喜剧角色》（1925）、《英国小说》（1927）等。

1929年出版代表作流浪汉小说《好伙伴》，1930年出版现实主义小说《天使人行道》。其后又出版《英国旅行记》（1934）、《沙漠午夜》（1937）及续集《雨落神山》（1939）等书，描述个人经历，对社会进行批评，深切同情失业群众悲惨的境遇。

1932年开始写作剧本,批评英国中产阶级，主要剧本有《危险的角落》（1932）、《我曾来过这里》（1937）、《巡官登门》（1946）、《明天到家》（1949）、《玻璃笼子》（1957）等。他还自己经营剧团，曾在伦敦两个剧院任导演。普里斯特利后期的文学批评和文学史著作以《文学和西方人》（1960）为代表。晚年研究英国社会史，代表作有《维多利亚的全盛期》（1972）、《英国人》（1973）等。卒于1984年8月14日。

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普里斯特利

约翰·波因顿·普里斯特利对中国某些读者可能并不是一个陌生的名字，因为在现代英国文学的许多选本他们常发现少不了他的作品，无论是小说，戏剧，散文，都有他的代表作入选，这说明他名气很大，多才而且多产。作品也受到读者欢迎。普里斯特利对社会问题一直是关心的，这贯穿了他的写作生涯，社会批评在他的文学创作中有十分重要的地位。普里斯特利纯粹谈风花雪月、鸟兽虫鱼的小品是很少的，吸引他的注意力的多半是衣食住行之类的生活俗务。就普里斯特利整个创作的散文部分而言，他的题材宽广，文笔幽默隽永，富有个性，但就思想深度来看，若和十九世纪的散文大师如卡莱尔、罗斯金、阿诺德比较，他又缺乏系统哲学修养，不能达到他们的那处博大精深，还称上一个思想家，他的多产也使他写得匆忙，有的篇章难免草率粗糙，他堪称一位优秀的散文作家，但还达不到大师的地位。

Early Years

Priestley was born at 34 Manningham Road,Heaton,which he described as an "ultra-respectable" suburb of Bradford. His father was a headteacher. His mother died when he was still an infant and his father remarried four years later. Priestley was educated at Belle Vue Grammar School,which he left at sixteen to work as a junior clerk at Helm & Co.,a wool firm in the Swan Arcade. During his years at Helm & Co. （1910–1914），he started writing at night and had articles published in local and London newspapers. He was to draw on memories of Bradford in many of the works he wrote after he had moved south,including Bright Day and When We Are Married. As an old man he deplored the destruction by developers ofVictorianbuildings in Bradford such as the Swan Arcade,where he had his first job.

Priestley served during the First World War in the 10th Battalion,the Duke of Wellington's Regiment. He was wounded in 1916 by mortar fire. In his autobiography,Margin Released he is fiercely critical of the British Army and in particular of the officer class.

After his military service Priestley received a university education at Trinity Hall,Cambridge. By the age of 30 he had established a reputation as a humorous writer and critic. His novel Benighted （1927） was adapted into the James Whale film The Old Dark House （1932）； the novel has been published under the film's name in the United States.

Career

Priestley's first major success came with a novel,The Good Companions （1929），which earned him the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction and made him a national figure. His next novel,Angel Pavement （1930） further established him as a successful novelist. However,some critics were less than complimentary about his work,and Priestley began legal action against Graham Greene for what he took to be a defamatory portrait of him in the novel Stamboul Train （1932）.

In 1934 he published the travelogue English Journey,which is an account of what he saw and heard while travelling through the country in the autumn of the previous year.

He moved into a new genre and became equally well known as adramatist. Dangerous Corner was the first of a series of plays that enthralled West End theatre audiences. His best-known play is An Inspector Calls （1945），later made into a film starring Alastair Sim released in 1954. His plays are more varied in tone than the novels,several being influenced by J. W. Dunne's theory of time,which plays a part in the plots of Dangerous Corner （1932） and Time and the Conways （1937）.

Many of his works have a socialist aspect. For example,An Inspector Calls,as well as being a "Time Play",contains many references tosocialism— the inspector was arguably an alter ego through which Priestley could express his views.

During World War Ⅱ,he was a regular broadcaster on theBBC. The Postscript,broadcast on Sunday night through 1940 and again in 1941,drew peak audiences of 16 million; only Churchill was more popular with listeners. But his talks were cancelled. It was thought that this was the effect of complaints from Churchill that they were too left-wing; however,Priestley's son has recently revealed in a talk on the latest book being published about his father's life that it was in fact Churchill's Cabinet that brought about the cancellation by supplying negative reports on the broadcasts to Churchill.

Priestley chaired the 1941 Committee,and in 1942 he was a co-founder of the socialist Common Wealth Party. The political content of his broadcasts and his hopes of a new and different England after the war influenced the politics of the period and helped the Labour Party gain its landslide victory in the 1945 general election. Priestley himself,however,was distrustful of the state and dogma.