J.b. priestley family
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BEGINNINGS
J.B.Priestley was born John Priestley on September 13th 1894 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the son of a schoolmaster. His mother died when he was very young, and he was brought up by his stepmother.After leaving Belle Vue School when he was 16, he worked in a wool office. But, already determined to become a writer, he spent his hard earned money on buying books, and used his spare time trying different kinds of writing, including a regular unpaid column in a local periodical, the Bradford Pioneer. Samples of his early writing are kept in the Archive at the Special Collections of the J.B.Priestley Library at the University of Bradford. His first piece of professional writing was an article “Secrets of the Rag-Time King” which appeared in London Opinion on Dec 14th 1912.
WORLD WAR I
He volunteered for the army in September 1914 and served for five years in England and France.The only time he wrote about his experiences during the First World War was in MARGIN RELEASED, but some of his letters home from the army survive in the Archive, and these were amal
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J. B. Priestley: biography
John Boynton Priestley, known widely by his pen name J.B. Priestley, was a distinguished English novelist, playwright, and broadcaster. His works, which include more than 50 plays and over a hundred novels, were marked by their insightful social commentary and their exploration of time and existence.
Fig. 1 - J. B. Priestley was an author, playwright, and social commentator who is best known for his play An Inspector Calls.
Born on 13th September 1894, in the industrial city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, Priestley grew up in a working-class family. His mother, Emma Holt, passed away when he was just two years old, leaving him to be raised by his father, Jonathan Priestley, and stepmother (who Jonathan married after 4 years). Despite these early hardships, Priestley developed a love for reading and writing that would fuel his future career.
Priestley's education was interrupted by World War I. He served on the front line and narrowly escaped death on several occasions. On one occasion, in 1916, he was buried alive by a trench mortar and badly wounde
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Biography
About J.B. Priestley: The Last Great Man of English Letters
John Priestley (he added Boynton later on) was born in Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire on 13 September 1894. His father, Jonathan, was a pioneering schoolmaster, his mother, Emma, had been a mill girl. Emma died when he was very young, but fortunately his stepmother, Amy, was very kind. Jack, as he was known to the family, enjoyed the rich cultural and social life of prosperous, cosmopolitan and relatively classless Bradford: music hall, football, classical music concerts and family gatherings. Many of his finest novels, plays and memoirs draw on his feelings about this vanished time, particularly “Bright Day” (1946), in which a disillusioned scriptwriter looks back at his golden Bradford adolescence, and “Lost Empires” (1965), recreating the 1913 variety theatre.
Priestley was educated at Belle Vue School, and then worked in a wool office in the Swan Arcade. His main interest by this time however was writing: his first publication was “Secrets of the Ragtime King” for London Opinion, then a series o
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