This article is about the writer Graham Greene. For the Canadian actor, see Graham Greene (actor).
Graham Greene (October 2, 1904 – April 3, 1991) was a prolific English novelist.
Life and work
He was born Henry Graham Greene in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, where his father was headmaster of Berkhamsted School, which he attended. He went on to Balliol College, Oxford, and his first work (a volume of poetry) was published in 1925, while he was an undergraduate. In his autobiography, he gives many details of his difficult childhood. After graduation, he became a Catholic, was briefly married, and took up a career in journalism. Amongst other things, he was a film critic, until he caused the closedown of the magazine for which he worked by getting it involved in a libel action as a result of a comment he made about Shirley Temple.
His novels are written in a contemporary realistic style, often featuring characters troubled by self-doubt and living in seedy or rootless circumstances. The doubts were often of a religious nature, perhaps echoing the author's Roman Catholic beliefs.
Greene's books were originally divided into thrillers, mystery/suspense books that were cast as "entertainments" but which often included a notable philosophical edge, and the high literary books such as The Power and the Glory, on which his reputation was thought to be based. As his career lengthened, however, Greene and his readers both found the "entertainments" to be of nearly as high a value as the literary efforts, and Greene's later efforts such as The Human Factor , The Comedians , Our Man in Havana and The Quiet American combine these modes into works of remarkable insight and compression.
In the last years of his life, Greene lived in the small resort city of Vevey, on Lake Geneva in Switzerland. On his passing in 1991, he was interred in the nearby cemetery in Corsier-sur-Vevey .
October 2004 saw the publication of the third and final volume of The Life of Graham Greene by Norman Sherry, Greene's official biographer. The writing of this biography created a story in itself in that Sherry followed in Greene's footsteps, even coming down with diseases that Greene had come down with in the same place.
Bibliography
Verse
Novels
Autobiography
-
A Sort of Life 1971 (autobiography)
- Ways of Escape 1980 (autobiography)
- A World of My Own 1992 (dream diary, posthumously published)
Travel Books
- Journey Without Maps 1936
- The Lawless Roads 1939
- 1961
Plays
- The Living Room 1953
- The Potting Shed 1957
- The Complaisant Lover 1959
- Carving a Statue 1964
- The Return of A.J.Raffles 1975
- The Great Jowett 1981
- Yes and No 1983
- For Whom the Bell Chimes 1983
Short Stories
Further reading
External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations by or about Graham Greene
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- A Review of Graham Greene's "Lawless Roads" http://www.hirohurl.net/lawlessroads.html
Last updated: 02-09-2005 10:03:11
Last updated: 05-06-2005 01:27:49
