Literature and Western Man

by J.B. Priestley

This is a 500 page survey of western literature which included Russia and and United States. It covers from about the mid 15th Century until 1960. The book was published by J.B.Priestley in 1960 and the last Author discussed was Thomas Wolfe.

Genres: Literature, Nonfiction, History, Literary Criticism, Reference

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

John Boynton Priestley was an English writer. He was the son of a schoolmaster, and after schooling he worked for a time in the local wool trade. Following the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Priestley joined the British Army, and was sent to France - in 1915 taking part in the Battle of Loos. After being wounded in 1917 Priestley returned to England for six months; then, after going back to the Western Front he suffered the consequences of a German gas attack, and, treated at Rouen, he was declared unfit for active service and was transferred to the Entertainers Section of the British Army.

When Priestley left the army he studied at Cambridge University, where he completed a degree in Modern History and Political Science. Subsequently he found work as theatre reviewer with the Daily News, and also contributed to the Spectator, the Challenge and Nineteenth Century. His earliest books included The English Comic Characters (1925), The English Novel (1927), and English Humour (1928). His breakthrough came with the immensely popular novel The Good Companions, published in 1929, and Angel Pavement followed in 1930. He emerged, too, as a successful dramatist with such plays as Dangerous Corner (1932), Time and the Conways (1937), When We Are Married (1938) and An Inspector Calls (1947).
The publication of English Journey in 1934 emphasised Priestley's concern for social problems and the welfare of ordinary people.
During the Second World War Priestley became a popular and influential broadcaster with his famous Postscripts that followed the nine o'clock news BBC Radio on Sunday evenings. Starting on 5th June 1940, Priestley built up such a following that after a few months it was estimated that around 40 per cent of the adult population in Britain was listening to the programme.
Some members of the Conservative Party, including Winston Churchill, expressed concern that Priestley might be expressing left-wing views on the programme, and, to his dismay, Priestley was dropped after his talk on 20th October 1940.
After the war Priestley continued his writing, and his work invariably provoked thought, and his views were always expressed in his blunt Yorkshire style.
His prolific output continued right up to his final years, and to the end he remained the great literary all-rounder. His favourite among his books was for many years the novel Bright Day, though he later said he had come to prefer The Image Men.
It should not be overlooked that Priestley was an outstanding essayist, and many of his short pieces best capture his passions and his great talent and his mastery of the English language. He set a fine example for any would-be author.

Reviews

[Mohammad Ranjbari · Rating 3 out of 5]

گزارشی گزینشی و مفصل از تاریخ ادبیات غرب با توجه ویژه به ادبیات انگلستان و ژانرهای رمان، نمایشنامه و شعر
تاریخ ادبیات و نهضت های ادبی کشورهای ایتالیا، فرانسه، انگلستان، اسپانیا، آلمان و روسیه، بخش اعظمی از مطالب این کتاب را تشکیل می دهد. برای پروژه های دانشجویی کتابی مفید اما برای مطالعۀ اهل عموم شاید کمی سنگین باشد.

[Noel Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a book written sixty years ago many of the reviews and criticisms hold up very well aside from the “depth psychology” he’s such a fan of. Some of my favourite authors like Nabokov and Bellow fell outside the scope of the book (he picked 1939 as a stopping point) but others like Proust are very well covered. There are authors, like Faulkner or Hemingway, about whom I have very mixed feelings but could never pinpoint or express that ambivalence; I found the coverage of their works here very enlightening.

The author is very well read and expert at putting context around most of these major works of literature but he seemed to stray from his theme quite often. One author is barely covered as they are great but didn’t affect western mankind in a major way while other minor ones who should be excluded on the same grounds are given extra coverage. Not a big deal but I would like to have seen some of the greats like Jane Austen given a more in depth exploration; she receives some of the most glowing praise at least.

His coverage of the modern era (meaning shortly before world war 1 and on) is wonderful. He puts the war in fantastic context and we have to remember he was writing this after two world wars and all their horrors were still fresh but also the threat of nuclear war created a much thicker atmosphere than it does now. I’m shocked he didn’t even mention Einstein’s annus mirabilis though; not a literary event but its effect on everyone’s conception of time definitely changed the course of literature in the western world.

[Clare Blanchard]

Priestley had an idiosyncratic, quirky taste in literature, which can lead some readers to balk at what he includes and what he leaves out. Almost all fiction writers have some odd tastes and prejudices. At all events you can't write a book like this without ruffling somebody's feathers. And creative artists are notoriously vociferous in their likes and dislikes of other artists: Trollope couldn't stand Dickens; Dvorak and Smetana didn't get along - the list is almost endless.
Priestley's own literary reputation was undoubtedly blighted by the immense commercial success of his own fiction during his own lifetime, making him a target of ridicule as a 'middlebrow' by some of his illustrious contemporaries. There may have been a good deal of class snobbery and plain jealousy in the mix here. In their respective days, both Shakespeare and Dickens appealed to popular audiences and achieved commercial success.
For myself (and I must confess at this point to being a quirky and idiosyncratic writer myself!) this is one book I wouldn't want to see disappear from my shelf. I loved reading it from cover to cover. My own copy belonged to my Dad, who was a great reader of writers most readers have barely heard of today - the Sitwells, Hilaire Belloc, Andre Mauriac, to name but a few. I have to say I consider it to be part of my heritage as a writer, whatever flaws others may perceive it to have. I love it.

[Bionic Jean]

This looks really interesting: a survey of Western literature over a period of five centuries, from the 1500s up to the late 1930s (the start of the Second World War). J.B Priestley says in his introduction that he uses “Western” in a geographical sense, so includes Russia as well as Europe and America. It looks comprehensive, entertaining and idiosyncratic.

However it is a long, dense book, and I cannot read the small type in this edition. Neither is it published on kindle or kobo, or as a DAISY disc. Sadly then I have to leave this one unrated, and filed on my Goodreads shelves as abandoned.

[Sam Beal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dense read, but Im glad I got through it.

Priestly dives into literature within the Western World from the 1500 - 1930's. Priestly covers the major ages of literature and its writers.

Priestly's believes Western culture is that it's deteriorating, more rapidly as time goes on, and this can be seen through the examination of the authors and their works during this time period. The main driver of this deterioration is the rupture of organized religion. It served as a container that balanced the conscious and unconscious. Without this container, man is left flailing from one extreme to another, in search for meaning.

[Lucy · Rating 1 out of 5]

I suppose I must have waded through more boring books, but I can't quite remember when. And as for his choices of important literature......2 pages on Fenimore Cooper, and 2 lines on Jane Austen...nuff said. If you find a copy on someone's shelves, don't bother reading it.

[Gille Liath · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty good touchstone of any literary critic is how enthused they are about Shakespeare; everyone of any judgement knows that he's the tops. So it's reassuring that, after a slightly tepid opening, when he talks about the Bard JBP rises to the occasion with something of a tour de force (even, perhaps, claiming more than his due in describing him as an essentially religious writer, when arguably this is just where he falls short). And it's here that he sets out his stall for a book in which he often shows, not merely literary perception, but a depth of vision, an insight into the hidden springs of life, which you would struggle to find in his own fiction; a power of judgement that at times - like the way he hits off Wordsworth perfectly in less than a page - verges on the miraculous.

Writing at the height of his celebrity, this is a very personal take which entertains no opinions other than his own - which, indeed, seems to have been written out of the accumulated reading and thinking of years, without stirring from the 10,000 books he says he has in his own study. There is only the slightest passing mention of someone as important as Maugham and, then again, substantial sections on people who were probably never big names to the British public but who, if they every were, have since crumbled away utterly - Blok?

Sometimes startlingly insightful, sometimes a little glib, it is probably not for anyone who bridles at the word 'Man' in the title. It belongs to a time when there was broad agreement about the books an educated person ought to know; and those books were selected on quality alone, without regard to what demographic they represented. No one person, however famous an author or however widely read, would now be likely to take such a broad survey upon themselves; if they stuck to the canon they would be accused of narrowness or worse, and if not they would never be able to cover the subject.

When all's said and done, though, he makes you want to read the things he talks about. And that's probably the best thing you could say about a book of this type.

Note that, beginning with the Renaissance, this casts no more than a respectful nod in the direction of medieval literature. Indeed, as he perceptively says, if they had little literature compared to us it may because they had no need of it, and were the better for that. I like that: respect for the middle ages is another litmus test of the truly cultured.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A hugely impressive sweep of the literature of Britain, America, France. Germany, Russia in particular; but the rest of Europe is included; from the invention of the printing press to the start of the Second World War. The breadth and range is both its strength and a significant weakness. Impossible, even for someone of Priestley’s gifts and reading, to give balanced, perceptive and equal weight to so much writing without risk of brushing over areas too quickly and at insufficient depth. His bombs of wisdom ameliorate this to some extent but it is difficult to see who this is intended for; unless (like some of us on Goodreads) it is essentially intended for himself: a catalogue of reading and responses.

Having said that, it is a magnificent read. I read all the chapters on Rousseau and Romanticism years ago and allowed them to influence my thinking at undergraduate level. It has taken me nearly 40 years to read the book in its entirety. I’m delighted to say that I have used the intervening years to read a good number of the writers he talks about.

As always we like the bits we agree with the best. I was pleased to find I had a fellow in finding both Joyce and Virginia Woolf to be brilliant cut-de-sacs rather than paving the new highway for the development of the novel. I don’t love Ulysses or To the Lighthouse or Mrs Dalloway any the less and I love all of literature a little bit more for reading this book.

All part of an accidental season of JB Priestley books prompted by a casual Barry Cryer comment on Broadcasting House (Radio 4 about 6 weeks ago).

[Derek Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic - stylishly written and endlessly entertaining. Priestley seems to have read everything! Even his throwaway lines are classic. On Emily Dickinson: "...half spinster, half peeping troll, sharp, staccato, often awkward, never far from thoughts of death, but when successful a wonderfully bold and concentrated poet, making the men of her time seem timid and long-winded." A perfect summary, in my opinion.

[Velvetink]

*note to self. Copy from A.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting survey of literature from the Renaissance to World War II.