Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography

by Brian Finney

This award-winning biography unravels the ways in which Christopher Isherwood's autobiographically-based fiction connects with his own life and experiences. It argues that some of his later novels are just as powerful as the Berlin novels which made him famous. Using interviews with Isherwood and others and citing from Isherwood's unpublished letters at the time, Finney shows how the events in Isherwood's life became transformed into his fiction. Interspersed chapters offer informed critical analysis of all his major work up to 1978. This biography won the James Tait Black Memorial Award for non-fiction in 1979. It was also chosen by PhilipToynbee as one of his best three books of the year in the Observer.

Genres: Nonfiction

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Brian Finney is a prize-winning writer and professor emeritus in English literature. Born in London, he obtained a BA (hons) in English and Philosophy at Reading University and a PhD on D. H. Lawrence’s shorter fiction at University of London, where he taught literature and arranged extra-mural courses in the arts from 1964 to 1987. After immigrating to Southern California he taught at UC Riverside, UCLA, the University of Southern California ad California State University Long Beach.

He has published eight books. His second book, Christopher Isherwood: A Critical Biography, was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for non-fiction that year. It was also voted one of the best three books of the year by Philip Toynbee in the Observer. He went on to publish, among others, The Inner I, a pioneering study of British literary autobiography, and a widely cited book about British fiction in the eighties and nineties, English Fiction Since 1984. In 2011 he published on Amazon Terrorized: How the War on Terror Affected American Culture and Society. He has also edited three editions of D. H. Lawrence’s work, and published a range of essays and reviews in various journals and newspapers.

In August 2019 he published his first novel, Money Matters, in which an inexperienced young woman is persuaded to search for a woman who has disappeared and comes up against the powerful forces of big money, politics and a drug cartel. By the end of her search she has become a different person. This book is a Finalist in the 2019 Best American Fiction Awards. His second novel, Dangerous Conjectures, set in the Bay Area in the opening months of 2020 when the pandemic was spreading,, was published in 2021. His third novel, Only the Rich, is forthcoming in 2023.

Brian Finney is married and lives in Venice, California.

Reviews

[Tony]

Finney writes about Isherwood the man and delves deep into his books offering a commentary on his work and what shaped it - people, places, events.

[Peter Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good biography and commentary on Isherwood,useful for literature students and those who can remember him.

[Claire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my dissertation.
Finney gives an in depth and interesting insight into Isherwood's life and how it so intrinsically links to his literature. I thoroughly enjoyed the style in which it was written in and it's made me excited to further research into Isherwood's life.