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
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...
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 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...
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...
Friends, Associates Muriel Spark
She acquired new literary friends after her religious conversion, such as Allen Tate , Neville and June Braybrooke (the latter of whom wrote as Isobel English , and titled two of her novels at Spark's...

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.