John Osborne

A Casebook

Patricia D. Denison

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136546679
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

For British playwright, John Osborne, there are no brave causes; only people who muddle through life, who hurt, and are often hurt in return. This study deals with Osborne's complete oeuvre and critically examines its form and technique; the function of the gaze; its construction of gender; and the relationship between Osborne's life and work. Gilleman has also traced the evolution of Osborne's reception by turning to critical reviews at the beginning of each chapter.

Bibliography

Patricia D. Denison and Michal Lemberger

Primary Sources

Stage

A Bond Honoured. [Lope De Vega, La Fianza Satisficha, adapted by John Osborne.] London: Faber and Faber, 1966.

Déjàvu. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.

The Devil Inside. [Written in collaboration with Stella Linden.] Staged at Theatre Royal, Huddersheld, 1950. Unpublished.

The End of Me Old Cigar. London: Faber and Faber, 1975.

The Entertainer. London: Faber and Faber, 1957.

Epitaph for George Dillon. [Written in collaboration with Anthony Creighton.] London: Faber and Faber, 1958.

Four Plays: “West of Suez,” “A Patriot for Me,” “Time Present,” “The Hotel in Amsterdam.” New York: Dodd, Mead, 1972.

Hedda Gabier. [Henrik Ibsen, adapted by John Osborne.] London: Faber and Faber, 1972

Inadmissible Evidence. London: Faber and Faber, 1965.

Look Back in Anger. London: Faber and Faber, 1957.

Look Back in Anger and Other Plays. Collected Plays, Vol. I [Look Back in Anger, Epitaph for George Dillon, The World of Paul Slickey, Déjàvu]. London: Faber and Faber, 1993.

Luther. London: Faber and Faber, 1961.

A Patriot for Me. London: Faber and Faber, 1966.

Personal Enemy. [Written in collaboration with Anthony Creighton.] Staged Harrogate 1955 Unpublished.

“The Picture of Dorian Gray”: A Moral Entertainment. [Oscar Wilde, adapted by John Osborne.] London: Faber and Faber, 1973.

A Place Calling Itself Rome. [Based on Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.] London: Faber and Faber, 1973.

Plays for England: “The Blood of the Bambergs” and “Under Plain Cover.” London: Faber and Faber, 1963.

A Sense of Detachment. London: Faber and Faber, 1973.

Strindberg’s “The Father” and Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabier.” [August Strindberg and Henrik Ibsen, adapted by John Osborne.] London: Faber and Faber, 1989.

A Subject of Scandal and Concern. London: Faber and Faber, 1961.

Time Present and The Hotel in Amsterdam. London: Faber and Faber, 1968.

Watch It Come Down. London: Faber and Faber, 1975.

West of Suez. London: Faber and Faber, 1971.

The World of Paul Slickey. London: Faber and Faber, 1959.

Film

The Charge of the Light Brigade. A Woodfall production in 1968; directed by Tony Richardson; screenplay by John Osborne and Charles Wood.

The Entertainer. A Woodfall production in 1960; directed by Tony Richardson; screenplay by John Osborne and Nigel Kneale.

Inadmissible Evidence. A Woodfall production in 1968; directed by Anthony Page; screenplay by John Osborne.

Look Back in Anger. A Woodfall production in 1959; directed by Tony Richardson; screenplay by Nigel Kneale with additional dialogue by John Osborne.

Tom Jones. A Woodfall production in 1962; directed by Tony Richardson; screenplay by John Osborne. Scripts: London: Faber and Faber, 1964 (Osborne’s script) and New York: Grove Press, 1964 (final film version).

Television

Almost a Vision. Unpublished. Transmitted by ITV, 1 September 1976.

“A Better Class of Person” [An Extract of Autobiography for Television] and “God Rot Tunbridge Wells” [An Account of George Frideric Handel]. London: Faber and Faber, 1985.

“The Gift of Friendship”: A Flay for Television. London: Faber and Faber, 1972.

“Jill and Jack”: A Flay for Television. London: Faber and Faber, 1975.

“The Right Prospectus”: A Play for Television. London: Faber and Faber, 1970.

Very Like a Whale. London: Faber and Faber, 1971.

“You’re Not Watching Me, Mummy” and “Try a Little Tenderness”: Two Plays for Television. London: Faber and Faber, 1978.

Nonfiction

Almost a Gentleman: An Autobiography, Vol. II, 1955-1966. London: Faber and Faber, 1991.

“The American Theatre.” Encore 19 (March-April 1959): 17-21.

“At Home.” Independent 4 April 1994, Feature: 17.

Review of At the Royal Court by Richard Findlater. New Standard 4 April 1981.

Review of Autobiography by Noël Coward. Tatler June 1986.

“Berliner Ensemble.” Times 5 September 1963: 13D.

A Better Class of Person: An Autobiography, Vol. I, 1929-1956. London: Faber and Faber, 1981.

The British Playwrights’ Mafia. Sunday Times Magazine 16 October 1977. [Included, among others, Rodney Ackland, John Arden, Alan Bennett, Robert Bolt, Bill Bryden, Edward Bond, Christopher Hampton, Peter Nichols, Arnold Wesker, and Charles Wood.]

“Come On In: The Revolution Is Only Just Beginning.” Tribune 27 March 1959: 11. [On British theatre and the Royal Court Theatre.]

Damn You, England: Collected Prose. London: Faber and Faber, 1994. [Collection from more than thirty years of journalism, letters, profiles, and book reviews; writings included in this bibliography, as well as other nonfiction not included here.]

“Diary.” Spectator 13 July 1985: 7. 20 July 1985: 7. 27 July 1985, 7. 3 August 1985: 7. 30 May 1992: 7. 6 June 1992: 6. 13 June 1992: 6. 20 June 1992: 7. 17 April 1993: 6. 24 April 1993: 7. 1 May 1993: 7. 4 December 1993: 6. 11 December 1993: 7. 18 December 1993: 8. 7 May 1994: 7. 14 May 1994: 6. 21 May 1994: 7. 3 December 1994: 8. 17 December 1994: 8.

“The Diary of a Somebody.” Review of The Orton Diaries. Ed. John Lahr. Spectator 29 November 1986:31-32.

“Dr. Agostinho Neto.” Times 2 October 1961: 13D.

“The Entertainer.” Writers’ Theatre. Eds. Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall. London: Heinemann, 1967. 51.

“The Enthusiasm of a Young Critic.” Review of François Truffaut: Letters ed. by Gilles Jacob and Claude Givray. Spectator 23 December 1989: 73.

“The Epistle to the Philistines.” London Tribune 13 May 1960: 9. Rpt. in John Osborne: “Look Back in Anger,” A Casebook. Ed. John Russell Taylor. 62-63. [On the monarchy.]

“The Fallen Idol.” Review of Songs My Mother Taught Me by Marlon Brando, with Robert Lindsey. Spectator 8 October 1994: 48-49.

“Final Victory to the Silk Dressing-Gown.” Review of Noël Coward by Clive Fisher. Spectator 2 May 1992:31.

Foreword. Look Back in Anger. London: Evans Bros., 1957. 2-4.

Foreword. Low Life by Jeffrey Barnard. London: Duckworth, 1986.

“Friendship—But Money Comes into It, Too.” Evening Standard 23 April 1960.

“Golden Moments with a Person.” Review of Difficulties with Girls by Kingsley Amis. Spectator 1 October 1988: 34-35.

“A Great Englishman.” Review of john Betjeman: Letters, Vol. 1, 1926-1951 ed. by Candida Lycett Green. Spectator 23 April 1994: 30-31.

“Great Sighs of Today.” Spectator 22 December 1984: 24-25. [On the language of the Anglican Church’s alternative service book.]

Review of The Honourable Beast: A Posthumous Autobiography by John Dexter. Sunday Telegraph 30 June 1993: Books, 11.

“In Love with the Productions of His Time.” Review of Kicking against the Pricks by Oscar Lewenstein. Spectator 4 June 1994: 32.

“Inside the Monstrous Concrete Piety.” Review of The National: A Dream Made Concrete by Peter Lewis. S...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• General Editor’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chronology
• The House That Jimmy Built
• Beyond Anger: Osborne’s Wrestle with Language and Meaning
• The Personal, the Political, and the Postmodern in Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Déjàvu
• Osborne on the Fault Line: Jimmy Porter on the Postmodern Verge
• The Logic of Anger and Despair: A Pragmatic Approach to John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger
• The Entertainer as a Text for Performance
• Luther: The Morbid Grandeur of Corporeal History
• From Out of the Shadow of Nicol Williamson: Inadmissible Evidence
• Seduced by Meritocracy: Class and Sexuality in A Patriot for Me
• “Honey, I Blew Up the Ego”: John Osborne’s Déjàvu
• John Osborne, Summer 1993
• The Angry Young Man Who Stayed That Way
• A Memory of John Osborne
• Eulogy for John Osborne
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index