An Inspector Calls and J B Priestley's Political Journey

Flashcards covering key terms, historical context, key figures, and political influences on J B Priestley from the lecture text.

An Inspector Calls

A play by J B Priestley revolving around ideas of social responsibility and guilt, posing questions about how people live together and individual responsibility.

J B Priestley

Writer born in 1894 in Bradford, Yorkshire, whose life experiences, military service, and observations of social inequality shaped his socialist beliefs.

Gareth Lloyd Evans

The commentator who described An Inspector Calls as 'perhaps the clearest expression made by Priestley of his belief that "no man is an island"'.

Bradford, Yorkshire

An industrial town that grew rapidly around the wool and dyeing industries and became a city in 1897, where Priestley grew up.

Helm and Company

A firm in the wool trade where young 'Jack' Priestley worked as a junior clerk.

Bradford Pioneer

A newspaper that embodied the West Riding's strong Nonconformist socialist traditions and heavily influenced Priestley's political views.

Jonathan Priestley

J B Priestley's father, who epitomised the West Riding's Nonconformist socialist traditions.

'Badly-divided men'

Priestley's phrase for Bradford's hypocritical respectable folk who were pompously religious on Sundays and coarsely raffish on Saturday nights.

Devonshires

The British Army unit in which Priestley served as an officer during the First World War.

Regimental reunion

An event in Bradford where Priestley was outraged to learn that some of his fellow First World War veterans were too poor to afford evening clothes to attend.