John Osborne – författare

Photography, one of the most influential inventions of the nineteenth century, has been shaped by Canadian innovators. Among them are two Quebec men who have flown beneath the radar in studies of the history of photography: the Smeaton brothers.Out of the Studio documents the life, oeuvre, and achievement of Charles Smeaton and his younger brother, John. Launched by the opening of their "photographic gallery" in 1861, they developed a reputation in Quebec for images of contemporaneous people, places, and events taken in challenging outdoor settings. Smeaton pictures of the aftermath of the Great Fire of Quebec in 1866 helped bring an understanding of the disaster to an international audience; images featuring the gold mining industry were displayed at the Exposition universelle in Paris the following year. When Charles travelled to Europe in 1866, he accomplished a feat previously thought impossible, taking the first successful photographs in the Roman catacombs. John moved to Montreal in 1869, where he worked for newspapers and developed techniques for the direct transfer of photographs into print without the necessity of intermediary engravings.Out of the Studio is the first comprehensive biographical study detailing the innovation and imagination of the Smeaton brothers and their legacy of images across two continents.

During the late nineteenth century a remarkable combination of circumstances and individual talents permitted the Court theatre of a small German state to become the theatrical sensation of its age. The Meiningen Court Theatre developed into an international touring company under the leadership of Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen. This book is based on a wide range of published and unpublished contemporary documents, photographs and sketches (many of which are reproduced here). In this 1988 volume, Professor Osborne provides a broad cultural-historical context for the emergence of the Meiningen Company and describes in detail the style and staging of productions, as well as the personality and directorial method of the Duke himself. Two famous items in the Company's repertoire, Julius Caesar and Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, are selected for particular attention. The Meiningen Company became famous throughout Europe, and became a source of inspiration to future directors of the modern theatre such as Antoine, Brahm and Stanislavsky.

Medieval Rome was uniquely important, both as a physical city and as an idea with immense cultural capital, encapsulating the legacy of the ancient Empire, the glorious world of the martyrs and the triumph of Christian faith. Rome across Time and Space explores these twin dimensions of 'place' and 'idea' and analyses Rome's role in the transmission of culture throughout the Middle Ages. Ranging widely over liturgy, architecture, sculpture and textual history, the authors focus on the mutual enrichment derived from the exchange of ideas and illuminate how cultural exchanges between Rome and its 'neighbours' (Byzantium, Italy, England and France), and within Rome (between Ancient and early Christian Rome and the medieval city) worked as catalysts for change, both to shape the medieval city and to help construct the medieval idea of Rome itself. The result is a rich and original perspective on a beguiling city with enduring appeal.

During the late nineteenth century a remarkable combination of circumstances and individual talents permitted the Court theatre of a small German state to become the theatrical sensation of its age. The Meiningen Court Theatre developed into an international touring company under the leadership of Duke Georg II of Saxe-Meiningen. This book is based on a wide range of published and unpublished contemporary documents, photographs and sketches (many of which are reproduced here). In this 1988 volume, Professor Osborne provides a broad cultural-historical context for the emergence of the Meiningen Company and describes in detail the style and staging of productions, as well as the personality and directorial method of the Duke himself. Two famous items in the Company's repertoire, Julius Caesar and Prinz Friedrich von Homburg, are selected for particular attention. The Meiningen Company became famous throughout Europe, and became a source of inspiration to future directors of the modern theatre such as Antoine, Brahm and Stanislavsky.

Anyone who's never watched someone die is suffering from a pretty bad case of virginity. Look Back in Anger premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1956. 'John Osborne didn't contribute to British theatre: he set off a landmine called Look Back in Anger and blew most of it up.' Alan Sillitoe 'A story of youthful insecurity inflamed by lack of opportunity and the terrifying, destabilizing force of love . . . Jimmy Porter could fill an opera house with his bellowing hunger for a bigger, better life and a loyal love to share it with.' New York Times 'Look Back in Anger presents post-war youth as it really is. To have done this at all would be a signal achievement; to have done it in a first play is a minor miracle. All the qualities are there, qualities one had despaired of ever seeing on the stage - the drift towards anarchy, the instinctive leftishness, the automatic rejection of "official" attitudes, the surrealist sense of humour, the casual promiscuity, the sense of lacking a crusade worth fighting for and, underlying all these, the determination that no one who dies shall go unmourned . . . I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger. It is the best young play of its decade.' Kenneth Tynan, Observer 'How bracing, and, yes, even shocking, its white-hot fury remains.' The Times This edition includes an introduction by Michael Billington and an afterword by David Hare.

In 1956 John Osborne's Look Back in Anger changed the course of English theatre. This volume includes some of the early plays which launched his career along its startling trajectory, as well as his much later play, Dejavu, which brings us Look Back in Anger's Jimmy Porter thirty-five years on, older and wiser, but no less indignantly eloquent.

This second collection of John Osborne's dramatic work includes The Entertainer, The Hotel in Amsterdam, West of Suez and Time Present. 'A lifelong satirist of prigs and puritans, whether of the Right or Left, he took no hostages, expecting from other people the same unyielding, unflinching commitment to their view of the truth which he took for granted in his own. Of all the British playwrights of the twentieth century he is the one who risked the most. And risking most, frequently offered the most rewards.' David Hare, Spectator'Osborne was an instinctive writer, but he had genius in his early years for capturing the national mood and conveying undiluted feeling... one wonders whether any of the bright new talents will have the courage to do what Osborne did in the past: to encapsulate on the tiny stage the state of the nation at large.' GuardianPraise for The Entertainer'The rancid, dead-accurate domestic dialogue is a joy, with clichés dropping like bats from the ceiling... the play becomes a flamboyant coronach for England's lost greatness, enshrining one of the great characters in modern drama.' Daily Telegraph'Like all Osborne's best work, this is a play about personal failure, individual desolation, the frustration of a community. One of the reasons why Osborne changed the face of English theatre is that he made passionate personal drama out of a national malaise.' Sunday Times

This third collection of John Osborne's dramatic work includes three classic plays for the stage which confirm his reputation as one of the greatest British playwrights of the twentieth century. A Patriot for Me'It is a landmark play in its open treatment of homosexuality and in the breadth of its historical canvas... few post-war plays have dealt so brilliantly with the way the individual, in rejecting the ethos of his society, also uncannily reflects it.' GuardianLuther'The language is urgent and sinewy, packed with images that derive from bone, blood and marrow; the prose, especially in Luther's sermons, throbs with a rhetorical zeal that has not been heard in English historical drama since the seventeenth century.' Kenneth TynanInadmissible Evidence'This is a work of stunning and intemperate power, a great bellow of rage and pain... there is a self-lacerating honesty about his writing that few other playwrights have come close to matching.' Daily Telegraph

Set against the backdrop of post-war Britain, John Osborne's The Entertainer conjures the seedy glamour of the old music halls for an explosive examination of public masks and private torment.First staged at the Royal Court Theatre, London, only eleven months after the opening of Look Back in Anger, the play has become a classic of twentieth-century drama.

First broadcast on ITV's Playhouse in 1980, You're Not Watching Me, Mummy focuses on the hollowness of an actor's existence and was written as Osborne was separating from his then actress-wife.It is published here with Try a Little Tenderness which was written in 1978 but never produced.

Originally written in 1971, John Osborne's Very Like a Whale concerns a wealthy industrialist who becomes increasingly estranged from friends and family as he reaches the heights of success.It was first broadcast on ITV in 1980.

The Right Prospectus focuses on a middle-aged couple who attempt to inveigle their way into a public school as pupils. John Osborne was prompted to write the script by a dream in which he imagined himself to be back at school as an adult. It was first broadcast as a Play for Today on BBC1 in October 1970.'Not merely the most distinguished original television play of the year, but one which will linger uneasily in my mind for years ahead.' Daily Telegraph

Focused on rivalry and legacy, The Gift of Friendship examines the bitter relationship between two writers revealed after one of them dies. It was first broadcast on ITV in September 1974.

Intended as a sequel to Rome in the Eighth Century (Cambridge, 2020), this survey of the material culture of the city of Rome spans the period from the imperial coronation of Charlemagne in 800 to the nadir of the fortunes of the Roman Church a century later. The evidence of standing buildings, objects, historical documents, and archaeology is brought together to create an integrated picture of the political, economic, and cultural situation in the city over this period, one characterized initially by substantial wealth resulting in enormous patronage of art and architecture, but then followed by almost total impoverishment and collapse. John Osborne also attempts to correct the widespread notion that the Franco-papal alliance of the late eighth century led to a political and cultural break between Rome and the broader cultural world of the Christian eastern Mediterranean. Beautifully illustrated, this book is essential for everyone interested in medieval Rome.

This is the third and final volume in a series examining the history of Rome in the early Middle Ages (700-1000 CE) through the primary lens of the city's material culture. The previous volumes examined the eighth and the ninth centuries respectively. John Osborne uses buildings (both religious and domestic), their decorations, other works of painting and sculpture, inscriptions, manuscripts, ceramics, metalwork, and coins as 'documents' to supplement what can be gleaned from more traditional written sources such as the Liber pontificalis. The overall approach is particularly appropriate for tenth-century Rome, which has traditionally been considered a 'dark age', given recent research on standing monuments and the large amount of new material brought to light in archaeological excavations undertaken over the last four decades. This magnificent and beautifully illustrated volume provides a triumphant conclusion to a series which will be indispensable for all those interested in early medieval Rome.

St Peter's Basilica in Rome is arguably the most important church in Western Christendom, and is among the most significant buildings anywhere in the world. However, the church that is visible today is a youthful upstart, only four hundred years old compared to the twelve-hundred-year-old church whose site it occupies. A very small proportion of the original is now extant, entirely covered over by the new basilica, but enough survives to make reconstruction of the first St Peter's possible and much new evidence has been uncovered in the past thirty years. This is the first full study of the older church, from its late antique construction to Renaissance destruction, in its historical context. An international team of historians, art historians, archaeologists and liturgists explores aspects of the basilica's history, from its physical fabric to the activities that took place within its walls and its relationship with the city of Rome.

Medieval Rome was uniquely important, both as a physical city and as an idea with immense cultural capital, encapsulating the legacy of the ancient Empire, the glorious world of the martyrs and the triumph of Christian faith. Rome across Time and Space explores these twin dimensions of 'place' and 'idea' and analyses Rome's role in the transmission of culture throughout the Middle Ages. Ranging widely over liturgy, architecture, sculpture and textual history, the authors focus on the mutual enrichment derived from the exchange of ideas and illuminate how cultural exchanges between Rome and its 'neighbours' (Byzantium, Italy, England and France), and within Rome (between Ancient and early Christian Rome and the medieval city) worked as catalysts for change, both to shape the medieval city and to help construct the medieval idea of Rome itself. The result is a rich and original perspective on a beguiling city with enduring appeal.