Look Back in Anger: A Play in Three Acts

John Osborne

Criterion Books, 1957 - Drama - 96 pages

Jimmy Porter plays trumpet badly. He browbeats his flatmate, terrorizes his wife, and is not above sleeping with her best friend-who loathes Jimmy almost as much as he loathes himself. Yet this working-class Hamlet, the original Angry Young Man, is one of the most mesmerizing characters ever to burst onto a stage, a malevolently vital, volcanically articulate internal exile in the dreary, dreaming Siberia of postwar England. First produced in 1956, Look Back in Anger launched a revolution in the English theater. Savagely, sadly, and always impolitely, it compels readers and audiences to acknowledge the hidden currents of rottenness and rage in what used to be called "the good life." Book jacket.

About the author

John Osborne was born on December 12, 1929 in London, England. He was educated at Belmont College, Devon but was expelled after attacking the headmaster. He became involved in theatre, as a stage manager and then as an actor. He started writing plays and two of them, The Devil Inside Her and Personal Enemy, were staged in regional theatres before he submitted Look Back in Anger to the newly formed English Stage Company at London's Royal Court Theatre. The company chose the play as the third production to enter repertory. The play became a commercial success, transferring to the West End and to Broadway, and was later filmed with Richard Burton in the leading role. His other plays included The Entertainer, Luther, Inadmissible Evidence, A Patriot for Me, A Hotel in Amsterdam, A Sense of Detachment, and Deja Vu. He also wrote a number of screenplays, mainly adaptations of his own works. He won an Oscar for his 1963 adaptation of Tom Jones. He acted in a few films including Get Carter, Tomorrow Never Comes, and Flash Gordon. He also wrote two autobiographies entitled A Better Class of Person and Almost a Gentleman. He died from complications brought on from his diabetes on December 24, 1994 at the age of 65.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Look Back in Anger: A Play in Three Acts; A Bantam Classic
• Author: John Osborne
• Publisher: Criterion Books, 1957
• ISBN: 0875990819, 9780875990811
• Length: 96 pages
• Subjects: Drama / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Drama / General