A Better Class of Person: An Autobiography PDF
Preview A Better Class of Person: An Autobiography
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY As each of us looks back into his or her past, doors open upon darkness." —E. M. Forster This first installment of John Os- borne's autobiography tells of his life up to the production of Look Back iti Anger, the play that transformed con- temporary theatre. The author's first identifiable land- scape was a dismal territory of Lon- don, peopled by adults who longed for "the proper normal life" but for whom disappointment (theirs and others) was the oxygen of their lives. The young Osborne longed for affection in a world ofunfeeling adults in the shape of parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts who embodied all the nuances of English class between upper-lower and lower-middle. Grandfather Grove, the smartest publican in London, prefigured Billy Rice of The Entertainer. Adolescence included lying in a field watching the Battle ofBritain or in a shelter listening to German bombers (one of which bombed Mother off the lavatory), as well as intense friendships and equally intense reading and movies: "I knew the dialogue of The Four Feathers and The Prisoner of Zenda by heart." A failed military exam and a misguided engagement, following a reportorial stint for Gas World, led to ajob with the theatre, first as actor and stage man- ager and finally as playwright. (continued on back flap) ISBN: 0-525-0^34-^ 01335-400 ^ 3 cU>^ 4^ i/> d r)Q i* Plays by John Osborne The End of Me Old Cigar and Jill and Jack The Entertainer The Gift of Friendship Inadmissible Evidence Look Back in Anger Luther A Patriot for Me A Place Calling Itself Rome The Right Prospectus A Sense of Detachment A Subject of Scandal and Concern Time Present and The Hotel in Amsterdam Under Plain Cover and The Blood of the Bambergs Very Like a Whale Watch It Come Down West of Suez The World of Paul Slickey You're Not Watching Me, Mummy and Try a Little Tenderness with Anthony Creighton Epitaph for George Dillon adaptations A Bond Honoured (from Lope De Vega) Hedda Gabler (from Henrik Ibsen) The Picture of Dorian Gray (from Oscar Wilde) film Tom Jones Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 http://archive.org/details/betterclassofperOOosbo AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY DUTTON • NEW YORK Copyright © 1981 by John Osborne All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast. First published in the United States in 1981 by Elsevier-Dutton Publishing Co., Inc., 2 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 100 16 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-68564 ISBN: 0-525-06634-9 10 987654321
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