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A comprehensive biography of the Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. Learn about his life, works, influences, and legacy, from his childhood in England to his sojourn in Berlin and California.
Aug 22, 2024 · Learn about the life and works of Christopher Isherwood, a British-American novelist and playwright who wrote about Berlin in the 1930s. Find out how he became a follower of Vedanta, a pacifist, and a Hollywood screenwriter.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Learn about the life and works of Christopher Isherwood, a novelist, playwright, screen-writer, and diarist. Explore his friendships, travels, sexuality, spirituality, and legacy in this comprehensive biography.
- (84.9K)
- January 4, 1986
- August 26, 1904
- A Single Man.
- Goodbye to Berlin.
- The Berlin Stories.
- Mr. Norris Changes Trains.
- Early Life
- Path to Writing
- Berlin and Traveling Years
- Life in America
- Literary Style and Themes
- Legacy
- Sources
- GeneratedCaptionsTabForHeroSec
Christopher Isherwood was bornChristopher William Bradshaw Isherwood on his family’s estate in Cheshire on August 26, 1904. His father, who had studied at Cambridge University, was a professional soldier and member of the York and Lancaster Regiment, and had died in the First World War. His mother was the daughter of a successful wine merchant. Ish...
Isherwood enrolled at Corpus Christi College at Cambridge University in 1924, where he studied history. He wrote jokes and limericks on his second-year Tripos—undergraduate examination required to obtain a bachelor's—and was asked to leave without a degree in 1925. While at Cambridge, he was part of a generation that started taking films seriously,...
In March 1929, Isherwood joined Auden in Berlin, where his friend was spending a post-graduate year. It was just a ten-day visit, but it changed the course of his life. He explored his sexual identity freely, began an affair with a German boy he met at a cellar bar, and visited Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Sciences, which studied the sp...
Aldous Huxley, who had become devoted to Vedanta and meditation upon migrating to America in 1937, introduced Isherwood to the spiritual philosophy, bringing him to the Vedanta Society of Southern California. Isherwood became so immersed in the foundational texts that he produced no significant writing between 1939 and 1945, and for the rest of his...
“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking,” is the quote that opens the novel Goodbye to Berlin. This quote is reflective of Isherwood's literary style, as it reflects his desire to be both an eminent author and a successful screenwriter—he was quite mediocre in the latter. The quote also hints at his lack of a ce...
“Isherwood’s [literary] reputation seems assured,” wrote Peter Parker in his biography of Isherwood. However, the perception of his Berlin and English period still vastly differs from the reception of his American novels; the former has been widely accepted in the canon, while the position on the latter tends to devalue his work. In fact, when he s...
Freedom, Books. “Isherwood, from Weimar Berlin to Hollywood – Freedom, Books, Flowers & the Moon – Podcast.” Podtail, https://podtail.com/podcast/tls-voices/isherwood-from-weimar-berlin-to-hollywood/.Isherwood, Christopher, et al. Isherwood on Writing. University of Minnesota Press, 2007.Wade, Stephen. Christopher Isherwood. Macmillan, 1991.Learn about the life and achievements of Christopher Isherwood, a British-born writer who documented the Weimar era in Berlin and became a pioneer of LGBTQ literature. Explore his novels, autobiographies, diaries, and screenplays, and his relationships with W.H. Auden and Don Bachardy.
- Angelica Frey
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Browse the list of books by Christopher Isherwood, a British-American novelist and memoirist. Find ratings, reviews, editions, and genres for each book, such as A Single Man, Goodbye to Berlin, and The Berlin Stories.
Aug 26, 2024 · Christopher Isherwood. Katherine Bucknell, previously the editor of a four-volume edition of Christopher Isherwood’s diaries, has now published Christopher Isherwood Inside Out, an intimate and rigorous biography of the celebrated writer and gay cultural icon. Here she meets with Josh Zajdman to discuss the challenges and revelations of the book.
