Graham Greene

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Standard Name: Greene, Graham
Birth Name: Henry Graham Greene
An English novelist of exceptional energy, Graham Greene built a career spanning a dozen genres—most notably more than twenty novels or thrillers, as well as short stories, film reviews, travel books, plays, screenplays, and autobiography. Many of his novels wrestle with issues of belief. His personal correspondence included thousands of letters, and for much of his life he reported as a spy to the British Secret Intelligence Service . His restlessness drew him to dangerous places, adulterous relationships, self-harm, and a belief, infusing his pages, that a focus on squalor makes for an honest portrayal of the world.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Marjorie Bowen
MB was admired in her own day by others who prided themselves on the popular touch in their writing: Mark Twain , Walter de la Mare , Compton Mackenzie , and Hugh Walpole , who...
Literary responses Muriel Spark
Frank Kermode , reviewing this novel in The Listener, commented that the great pleasures offered by this writer are contingent upon our being willing to work harder than usual.
Page, Norman. Muriel Spark. Macmillan.
119
Again Graham Greene complimented...
Literary responses Muriel Spark
Her friend Graham Greene hastened to offer his usual compliment of best-since-Memento Mori—this time after reading only the first three pages.
Greene, Graham. Graham Greene. A Life in Letters. Editor Greene, Richard, Alfred A. Knopf.
399
Claire Tomalin called it a novel about a hate affair...
Literary responses Shelagh Delaney
The play provoked controversy for its matter-of-fact treatment of illegitimate pregnancy, miscegenation, and (male) homosexuality. Some critics admired its freshness and grit, while others found it disgusting and self-indulgent. All agreed that it would have...
Literary responses Daphne Du Maurier
Many commentators, like Anne Armstrong of the Saturday Review and a reviewer in Punch, were shocked and disgusted
Kelly, Richard. Daphne du Maurier. Twayne.
46
by DDM 's cold portrayal of Julius.Graham Greene wrote a review of this novel...
Literary responses Kathleen Raine
Graham Greene responded to this book with what he called an enthusiastic if ignorant howl. Though he had already seen and admired some of her poems, he wrote, he had not realised the quantity of...
Literary responses Violet Trefusis
Graham Greene observed that this novel's style was rather consciously spangled with felicities.
Holroyd, Michael. “A Tale of Three Novels”. London Review of Books, Vol.
32
, No. 3, pp. 31-2.
31
Michael Holroyd , agreeing with Greene, thought it witty but not one of her better novels.
Holroyd, Michael. “A Tale of Three Novels”. London Review of Books, Vol.
32
, No. 3, pp. 31-2.
31
Literary responses Dorothy L. Sayers
Within Sayers's lifetime she had become a figure of controversy on account of the element of Christian partisanship in her non-fictional works. In The Emperor's Clothes, 1953, Kathleen Nott bracketed Sayers with T. S. Eliot
Literary responses Patricia Highsmith
Reviews were mixed. Both the New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement were highly critical, the latter going so far as to call the book a depressingly . . . mechanical exercise in self-pastiche, employing...
Intertextuality and Influence Beryl Bainbridge
The married couple Colin Haycraft and Alice Thomas Ellis (herself a writer) both worked at Gerald Duckworth publishers, and met BB while she was working there as a clerk. They taught her to write properly...
Intertextuality and Influence P. D. James
PDJ followed the English tradition of detective-story writing that has continued from the 1920s and 1930s, a genre in which many women have held dominant positions. She spoke of her adolescent reading as influenced in...
Intertextuality and Influence Marjorie Bowen
In his introduction to a later edition, Graham Greene notes the effect of reading The Viper of Milan when he was in his teens. From that moment I began to write,
Greene, Graham, and Marjorie Bowen. “Introductory Note”. The Viper of Milan, Bodley Head, pp. 9-10.
9
he states, and...
Intertextuality and Influence Rumer Godden
RG found this negotiation among publishers traumatic. She had updated Shakespeare 's The Tempest in the spirit of the entertainments which Graham Greene used to intersperse among his serious novels. Spencer Curtis thought the story...
Intertextuality and Influence Bernice Rubens
BR 's novel The Ponsonby Post, about an English diplomat in Java, seems to set foot in Graham Greene territory.
British Books in Print. J. Whitaker and Sons.
1982
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
207
Friends, Associates Evelyn Waugh
He counted among his friends Graham Greene and his fellow comic novelists Nancy Mitford and Muriel Spark .

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