Isherwood, Christopher. (1904 - 1986).
L i f e
- emigrated to USA (1939), became an American citizen (1946)
W o r k
- wrote a plain and objective prose fixing an image of observed reality
- eschews an elaborate prosody in favour of an easily assimilated lucidity
- shows tolerance and sympathetic understanding
D r a m a :
- wrote plays in collaboration with W. H. Auden
The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935):
- critically successful
The Ascent of F6 (1936):
- a dramatic parable of power and will
On the Frontier (1938):
- less well-received
F i c t i o n :
Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye To Berlin (1939):
- novels set in the uncorseted, anything-goes Berlin
- based on his own experience of teaching in Berlin for four years
- cover the period of social and political unrest during the Nazi rise to power
- his Berlin is decadent, economically depressed, and politically volatile x but: artistically exhilarating
Christopher and His Kind (1977):
- a third person study of himself
Quote
"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking."
From Goodbye to Berlin (1939).
Basics
(Photo: Carl Van Vechten. 1939. Source: Wikipedia).
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Author
Christopher Isherwood. (1904 - 1986). Born British. American citizen since 1946. -
Work
Novelist. Playwright. Author of novels set in Berlin. -
Genres
Modern novel. Autobiograpy.
Literature
Abrams, Meyer Howard, ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Barnard, Robert. Stručné dějiny anglické literatury. Praha: Brána, 1997.
Baugh, Albert C. ed. A Literary History of England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967.
Coote, Stephen. The Penguin Short History of English Literature. London: Penguin, 1993.
Sampson, George. The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946.
Sanders, Andrew. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. New York: Clarendon Press, 1994.