Born in the wool-merchandizing city of Bradford, Yorkshire, John Boynton Priestley is the author of more than four score works. These include literary criticism, novels, plays, collected short stories, essays, illustrated accounts of social and literary history, and books of autobiographical and historical recollection.

After his mother's early death the boy Priestley was reared by a stepmother who, he has observed in Margin Released (1962), defied tradition by being kind and loving. His father, Jonathan Priestley, a schoolmaster, was, as Priestley has described him, the kind of man socialists have in mind when they write about socialists. Priestley was educated in Bradford, a city that provided a remarkable cultural ambiance for an imaginative boy who wanted to be a writer. Bradford not only offered drama, serious music, and the music hall, but also the Yorkshire Dales just a tram ride away. Priestley has acknowledged that Bradford from 1911-1914 did...