Henry Graham Greene was born in 1904 in
Hertfordshire,
England and died 1991 in
Switzerland. He was a
novelist,
playwright and
journalist. Most of his novels take place with the political backdrop of the time and place (
The End of the Affair takes place in
England at the end of
WWII ,
The Power and The Glory takes place in 30s Mexico when anti-Catholicism is rampant,
The Heart of the Matter takes place in WWII
Sierra Leone) and deals with morality and
God. Greene began to write at the urging of the
therapist he was sent to when he was 15 because of his repeated suicide attempts. He graduated
Balliol College with a
B.A. in Modern History and became an editor at the
Nottingham Journal. In 1926 he joined the
Catholic Church after beginning his relationship with
Vivien Browning, the woman he would marry a year later. In 1927 he became an
editor at the
London Times only to have to give up that job to become a full time writer. After writing a few novels, some well received some not, he began to travel the world.
Everywhere he traveled was a place in the midst of great turmoil and political change. Each major adventure would be transformed into a novel with some of the characters being real people he had met (Journey Without Maps coming from his travels through the jungles of Liberia, The Heart of the Matter from the time he spent as a British Secret agent in Sierra Leone]). He went to Cuba, Korea, Vietnam and Haiti among other places. You get the feeling that he was a professional spy that happened to be an incredible author, maybe someday we will know the extent of his service to MI6. He is the kind of writer whose own life story and personal growth are felt throughout in his stories. He is all about the frame of mind and anxiety of his well developed characters and about how they are affected, directly or indirectly, by the challenging times their stories take place in. He is an amazing author. I have only read his more famous novels, The End of the Affair, The Power and The Glory and Our Man in Havana but they were well worth the read.
Bibliography
1925 Babbling April
1929 The Man Within
1930 The Name of Action
1931 Rumour at Nightfall
1932 Stamboul Train
1932 Orient Express
1934 It’s a Battlefield
1934 The Old School
1935 England Made Me
1935 The Bear Fell Free
1935 The Basement Room & Other Stories
1936 Journey Without Maps
1936 A Gun For Sale
1938 Brighton Rock
1939 The Lawless Roads
1939 The Confidential Agent
1940 The Power and the Glory
1942 British Dramatists
1943 The Ministry of Fear
1946 The Little Train
1947 Nineteen Stories
1948 The Heart of the Matter
1948 Why do I Write?
1950 The Third Man
1950 The Fallen Idol
1950 The Little Fire Engine
1951 The Lost Childhood and Other Essays
1951 The End of the Affair
1952 The Little Horse Bus
1953 The Little Steamroller
1953 The Living Room
1953 Essais Catholiques
1954 Twenty-One Stories
1955 Loser Takes All
1955 The Quiet American
1957 The Spy’s Bedside Book
1957 The Potting Shed
1958 Our Man in Havana
1959 The Complaisant Lover
1961 A Burnt-Out Case
1961 In Search of a Character: Two African Journals
1963 A Sense of Reality
1964 Carving a Statue
1966 The Comedians
1967 May We Borrow Your Husband? And Other Comedies of the Sexual Life
1969 Collected Essays
1969 Travels with My Aunt
1971 A Sort Of Life
1972 Collected Stories
1972 The Pleasure Dome
1973 The Honorary Consul
1974 Lord Rochester’s Monkey
1975 An Impossible Woman: The Memories of Dottoressa Moor of Capri
1975 The Return of A.J. Raffles
1978 The Human Factor
1980 Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party
1980 Ways of Escape
1981 The Great Jowett
1982 J’Accuse: The Dark Side of Nice
1982 Monsignor Quixote
1983 Yes and No
1983 For Whom the Bell Chimes
1984 Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement
1985 Collected Plays
1985 The Tenth Man
1988 The Captain and the Enemy
1989 Yours etc.: Letters to the Press
1990 Reflections
1990 The Last Word and Other Stories
1992 A World of My Own
1993 The Graham Greene Film Reader: Mornings in the Dark