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
Publishing Antonia White
It then appeared as the first book issued by the new firm of Desmond Harmsworth , whose founder and owner was the lover of AW 's friend Wyn Henderson . Two thousand copies were printed...
Reception Antonia White
AW had used Sylvaine's name for a fictional actress flourishing some years before the real June Sylvaine was born. Her publisher, Eyre and Spottiswoode , played safe by withdrawing copies of the book. The case...
Friends, Associates Antonia White
While working for the Special Operations ExecutivePolitical Intelligence Department , AW met Graham Greene , Simone Weil , and Kathleen Raine .
Chitty, Susan. Now To My Mother. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
137
Early in the war, as she gradually moved closer to the Church, she wrote...
Friends, Associates Mary Wesley
Even when they lived in a remote spot, the Siepmanns' circle of close literary friends included Nancy Mitford , Graham Greene , Antonia White , and Emily Coleman .
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
When MW became successful as a...
Cultural formation Mary Wesley
MW was influenced in her religious thinking by several writers, including Simone Weil and Graham Greene . The novelist Antonia White stood as godmother to them both, and they seem to have fallen in mostly...
Friends, Associates Evelyn Waugh
He counted among his friends Graham Greene and his fellow comic novelists Nancy Mitford and Muriel Spark .
Textual Production Sarah Waters
She carried out as much research as available sources permitted into lesbian lives in England of the 1940s, and spent four years working on this novel (as compared with one year for her first). She...
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
Publishing Josephine Tey
The first publication by Gordon Daviot (wrongly spelled as Davitt) was a poem in the Weekly Westminster (latest title of the Westminster Gazette), in an issue which also included work by Graham Greene .
Henderson, Jennifer Morag. Josephine Tey, a life. Sandstone Press.
100-1
Textual Production Lesley Storm
In 1948, Twentieth-Century Fox filmed LS 's screenplay Meet Me At Dawn, which she wrote in collaboration with James Seymour .
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
She also co-wrote, with Graham Greene and William Templeton , the screenplay for...
Textual Production Lesley Storm
In 1953 she adapted another work by Graham Greene , this time his novel The Heart of the Matter. The screenplay is set in 1942, and tells the story of a deeply Catholic police...
Textual Production Mary Stewart
MS was bored by modern movements like the anti-novel, the sicks and the beats, but felt there was a place for them: they're trying things out, keeping literature alive and moving.
Stewart, Mary. “Mary Stewart”. Counterpoint, edited by Roy Newquist, George Allen & Unwin , pp. 561-7.
561
She thought her...
Publishing Muriel Spark
MS received £100 for it, half as an advance.
Stannard, Martin. Muriel Spark. The Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
164
She finished writing in late 1955, but then hit a snag: Macmillan developed cold feet about its being difficult. During this hiatus the proofs...
Literary responses Muriel Spark
This novel was chosen a Book Society recommendation (of which between six and ten were selected per month); it was not the choice of the month, since the panel felt it was too morbid—deeply...
Literary responses Muriel Spark
Graham Greene wrote to tell Spark that this was her best book since Memento Mori (as he was to do with several later titles as well).
Greene, Graham. Graham Greene. A Life in Letters. Editor Greene, Richard, Alfred A. Knopf.
309-10
Reviews were mixed, many sounding baffled. While admirers...

Timeline

13 January 1950: Carol Reed's most successful film, The Third...

Building item

13 January 1950

Carol Reed 's most successful film, The Third Man, starring Orson Welles , opened in London.

30 May 1967: Colonel Emeka Ojukwu of Eastern Nigeria made...

National or international item

30 May 1967

Colonel Emeka Ojukwu of Eastern Nigeria made a unilateral declaration of independence on the part of the Ibo people, which set up the Republic of Biafra.

By late October 1975: The short-story volume Angels at the Ritz,...

Writing climate item

By late October 1975

The short-story volume Angels at the Ritz, by expatriate Irish writer William Trevor (born Trevor Cox in 1928), was hailed by Graham Greene as probably the best collection of stories since Joyce 's Dubliners.

Summer 2005: News broke that one of the bestselling nonfiction...

Women writers item

Summer 2005

News broke that one of the bestselling nonfiction books of the year, Judith Kelly 's Rock Me Gently, included passages almost verbally identical with passages by other authors.

Texts

White, Antonia. “A Child of the Five Wounds”. The Old School, edited by Graham Greene, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 209-26.
Greene, Graham. Brighton Rock. Heinemann, 1938.
Greene, Graham. Graham Greene. A Life in Letters. Editor Greene, Richard, Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.
Benson, Theodora. “Hot-Water-Bottle Love”. The Old School, edited by Graham Greene, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 27-36.
Greene, Graham, and Marjorie Bowen. “Introductory Note”. The Viper of Milan, Bodley Head, 1960, pp. 9-10.
Robertson, E. Arnot. “Potting Shed of the English Rose”. The Old School, edited by Graham Greene, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 153-64.
Ford, Ford Madox, and Graham Greene. The Ford Madox Ford Reader. Editor Stang, Sondra J., Carcanet, 1986.
Greene, Graham. The Heart of the Matter. Heinemann, 1948.
Greene, Graham. The Human Factor. Bodley Head, 1978.
Bowen, Elizabeth. “The Mulberry Tree”. The Old School, edited by Graham Greene, Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 37-51.
Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. Heinemann, 1955.
Greene, Graham. Ways of Escape. Lester and Orpen Dennys, 1980.