Graham Greene (writer)

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 2001, his book The Heart of the Matter was listed as one of the 100 best English language novels of the 20th century by the editorial board of the American Modern Library.

Verse

• Bubbling April 1925

Novels

• The Man Within 1925
• The Name of Action 1930
• Rumour at Nightfall 1932
• Stamboul Train 1932
• It's a Battlefield 1934
• England Made Me 1935
• Brighton Rock 1938
• The Power and the Glory 1940
• The Heart of the Matter 1948
• The Third Man 1950 (for a film by Carol Reed)
• The End of the Affair 1951
• The Destructors 1954
• The Quiet American 1955
• Our Man in Havana 1958
• A Burnt-Out Case 1961
• The Comedians 1965
• Travels with My Aunt 1969
• The Honorary Consul 1973
• The Human Factor 1978
• Doctor Fischer of Geneva 1980
• Monsignor Quixote 1982
• The Captain and the Enemy 1982

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
• In Search of a Character: Two African Journals 1961

Plays

• The Living Room 1953
• The Potting Shed 1957
• The Complaisant Lover 1959

Referenced By