Miller, the playwright

by Dennis Welland

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman opened in New York in 1949 where it ran for 742 performances, putting it among the fifty longest Broadway runs and winning both the Drama Critics' and the Pulitzer prizes. Since then it has established itself as one of the most widely read and influential plays of the century. Its success has partly eclipsed Arthur Miller's other work, and it is Dennis Welland's aim in this book to give equally full consideration to such plays as The Crucible and All My Sons, both of which have, like Death of a Salesman, enjoyed long-running revivals on the London stage (and elsewhere) in recent years.
Welland also devotes attention to the film of The Misfits, starring Marilyn Monroe, then Miller's wife, and to the TV drama about Auschwitz, Playing For Time, as well as to more recent stage plays such as After The Fall, The Price and The American Clock.

174 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 1983

About the author

Following a 12-month Rockefeller scholarship to the University of Minnesota, Professor Dennis Welland began one of the first American Studies courses at the University of Nottingham in 1953. He helped to found the British Association of American Studies and acted as its first treasurer, secretary and chair (1980–83). Welland was the founder editor of the Journal of American Studies (1976). His publications include Arthur Miller (1961), Twain in England (1978) and The Life and Times of Mark Twain (1991).