Priestley on "An Inspector Calls."

Image of J. B. Priestley. NYPL.

The British Library offers some resources on J. B. Priestley's play "An Inspector Calls," which writer Chris Power calls "a morality play disguised as a detective thriller" in an article on the BL Web site. In 1912, the mysterious Inspector Goole arrives at the home of a wealthy manufacturer, telling the complacent family members that he has questions for them about the suicide of one Eva Smith. The ensuing events alter their lives forever.

• The BL has a "Programme Note" written by Priestley in 1972–74. He explains that he wrote the play in 1944–45; comments on its numerous productions around the world; and mentions the odd fact that no matter the location of the particular production, the audience reaction "was almost always exactly the same." He also notes that the selection of the year of the play's action is significant.

• Power's article discussing the play includes photos and reviews from the 1946 debut production with Ralph Richardson as Inspector Goole and Margaret Leighton as Sheila Birling.

Soundtrack, An Inspector Calls.

Silva Screen Records has released the soundtrack by Dominik Scherrer to the recent BBC adaptation of J. B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls, in which a mysterious inspector appears after a girl's suicide to question the Birling family.

The return of J. B. Priestley's doctor-sleuth.

Valancourt Books follows up its reprinting of playwright-novelist-BBC broadcaster J. B. Priestley's Benighted with his sole novel featuring an amateur sleuth, Salt Is Leaving (1966). A retiring doctor suspects foul play when a patient who requires regular treatment suddenly goes incommunicado. (A review appears here from the Victoria [TX] Advocate.)

Recent mystery acquisitions, UK National Portrait Gallery.

Edgar Wallace, from
The Biography of a
Phenomenon, by
Margaret Lane, NYPL.

Among recent acquisitions of the UK National Portrait Gallery:

• G. K. Chesterton
• Lady Antonia Fraser (additional photos here and here)
• Graham Greene
• J. B. Priestley
• Ian Rankin
• Edgar Wallace

Priestley on Dunkirk; Sharan Newman; the Lusitania and the LOC; place and the crime novel.

• J. B. Priestley (playwright, Dangerous Corner, 1932; An Inspector Calls, 1945, among numerous other works) comments on the WWII evacuation from Dunkirk in this June 1940 BBC broadcast.

• Sharan Newman discussed her new nonfiction book The Real History of the End of the World with Fred Stella on Common Threads (part 1 here, part 2 here). 

• This invoice reveals that the Library of Congress ordered, among other items, the Psychical Research Society Journal, which was being shipped via the Lusitania in 1914. (thank you to PhiloBiblos)

• This piece for the Australian Broadcasting Co.'s Book Show discusses the importance of place in the crime novel.

About the image: Alastair Sim in An Inspector Calls (dir. Guy Hamilton, 1954)

Happy birthday, J. B. Priestley.

British author, broadcaster, and prolific man of letters J. B. Priestley, who wrote the play An Inspector Calls (1945), was born today in Yorkshire in 1894. He died in 1984.

An Inspector Calls involves the prosperous Birling family in pre-World War I England and what happens when an Inspector Goole arrives on their doorstep with news of a suicide.

Priestley also wrote Mystery of Greenfingers: A Comedy of Detection (1937) and Bright Shadow: A Play of Detection in Three Acts (1950). Other mystery-related works include Benighted (aka The Old Dark House, 1927); the spy spoof I'll Tell You Everything (1932; cowritten with Gerald Bullett); Blackout in Gretley (1942), a novel of Nazi espionage in England; and Salt Is Leaving (1966).

Photo: Evocative artwork by Holly Harrell for the 2006 production of An Inspector Calls, Regent University (VA)