[3] "We can at least believe that man lives under God in a great mystery." Literature and Western Man (1960). However, he was skeptical of the usefulness of man's institutions of organized religion. Quoting from the same nonfiction work, he concludes that "Any last pretense of society having a religious foundation and framework, being contained at all by religion, has vanished."
Father: (schoolmaster)
Wife: Pat Tempest (m. 1921, two daughters, d. 1925 cancer)
Wife: Jane Wyndham Lewis (m. 1926, one daughter, div. 1952)
Wife: Jacquetta Hawkes (writer, m. 1953)
High School: Belle Vue Grammar School (dropped out at age 16)
University: Trinity College, Cambridge University (1922)
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Risk Factors: Smoking
Author of books:
The English Comic Characters (1925, criticism)
Essays of To-Day and Yesterday (1926, essays)
Adam in Moonshine (1927, novel)
Benighted (1927, novel)
Thomas Love Peacock (1927, biography)
The English Novel (1927, criticism)
The Good Companions (1929, novel)
Farthing Hall (1929, novel)
Angel Pavement (1930, novel)
Faraway (1932, novel)
Wonder Hero (1933, novel)
I'll Tell You Everything (1933, novel)
Albert Goes Through (1933, novella)
English Journey (1934, travelogue)
They Walk in the City (1936, novel)
Midnight on the Desert: A Chapter of Autobiography (1937, memoir)
The Doomsday Men: An Adventure (1938, novel)
Let the People Sing (1939, novel)
Rain Upon Godshill: A Further Chapter of Autobiography (1939, memoir)
Out of the People (1941, social studies)
Black-Out in Gretley: A Story of -- and for -- Wartime (1942, novel)
Daylight on Saturday: A Novel about an Aircraft Factory (1943, novel)
Three Men in New Suits (1945, novel)
Bright Day (1946, novel)
The Secret Dream: An Essay on Britain, America and Russia (1946, pamphlet)
Jenny Villiers: A Story of the Theatre (1947, novel)
The Arts under Socialism (1947, pamphlet)
The Plays of J. B. Priestley (1948, collection)
Festival at Farbridge (1951, novel)
The Other Place and Other Stories of the Same Sort (1953, short stories)
Low Notes on a High Level (1954, novel)
The Magicians (1954, novel)
Journey Down a Rainbow (1955, travelogue)
Literature and Western Man (1960, criticism)
Saturn Over the Water (1961, novel)
The Thirty-First of June (1961, novel)
Charles Dickens and His World (1961, biography)
The Shapes of Sleep: A Topical Tale (1962, novel)
Margin Released: Reminiscences and Reflections (1962, memoir)
Sir Michael and Sir George: A Comedy of the New Elizabethans (1964, novel)
Lost Empires (1965, novel)
Salt Is Leaving (1966, novel)
The Moments and Other Pieces (1966, collection)
It's an Old Country (1967, novel)
Out of Town: The Image Men Volume I (1968, novel)
London End: The Image Men Volume II (1968, novel)
The Prince of Pleasure and His Regency, 1811-20 (1969, biography)
The Edwardians (1970, history)
Snoggle (1971, juvenile)
The Carfitt Crisis and Two Other Stories (1975, short stories)
Wrote plays:
Dangerous Corner (1932)
Time and the Conways (1937)
An Inspector Calls (1946)
AKA John Boynton Priestley