Reading Order
An Inspector Calls Reading Order
An Inspector Calls (1945) by J.B. Priestley is the most performed British play after Shakespeare and a masterpiece of theatrical construction — the Birling family's dinner celebration disrupted by the arrival of Inspector Goole, who investigates the death of a girl named Eva Smith and who, in the course of the evening, reveals each family member's complicity in her destruction. The play is set in 1912 (before the Titanic, before the First World War) but written in 1945 (after the Second World War), and the gap between the play's setting and its composition date is central to its meaning: the Birlings' confident assumptions about the permanence of their world (Arthur Birling's famous speech about the Titanic being 'absolutely unsinkable') are known to the 1945 audience to be catastrophically wrong. Priestley uses this dramatic irony to organize the play's socialist moral: the Birlings' refusal to take responsibility for Eva Smith is a version of the attitudes that caused the wars. Inspector Goole's identity — real inspector? ghost? — is left deliberately unresolved.
Where to start
An Inspector Calls (1945) — the complete text. Priestley wrote the play in a week in 1945 and premiered it in the Soviet Union (because the London theaters were still involved in the war effort). It received its London premiere in 1946. Best Priestley reading order: An Inspector Calls → Time and the Conways → I Have Been Here Before → When We Are Married
Complete An Inspector Calls Book List
- 1Buy
An Inspector Calls
J.B. Priestley·1945·The most performed British play after Shakespeare — the Birling family's dinner disrupted by Inspector Goole and his investigation of Eva Smith. Written in a week in 1945; premiered in the Soviet Union; received its London premiere in 1946. The most important theatrical statement of post-war British socialist values - 2Buy
Time and the Conways
J.B. Priestley·1937·The companion Priestley play — the Conway family in 1919 (Act One), 1937 (Act Two, showing what they have become), and 1919 again (Act Three). Time and the Conways is An Inspector Calls' companion in Priestley's treatment of time as a moral category: both plays use temporal dislocation to make the audience confront the consequences of the characters' choices in a way that straightforward chronology would not allow - 3Buy
A Raisin in the Sun
Lorraine Hansberry·1959·Hansberry's companion in the tradition of the family play organized around the question of each family member's moral responsibility — the Younger family's different responses to what the insurance money means. An Inspector Calls and A Raisin in the Sun are companion family plays about individual responsibility and its evasion: both are organized around a family confronting an external demand that requires them to examine their own complicity in a larger social wrong - 4Buy
The Winslow Boy
Terence Rattigan·1946·Rattigan's companion in the tradition of the British play about justice, responsibility, and the individual vs. the institution — the Winslow family's campaign to clear their son Ronnie of the charge of theft from a naval academy. The Winslow Boy and An Inspector Calls premiered within a year of each other in 1946 and represent the two dominant modes of post-war British drama: Rattigan's procedural investigation of justice; Priestley's socialist investigation of responsibility - 5Buy
Look Back in Anger
John Osborne·1956·The companion in the British theatrical tradition — Jimmy Porter's assault on the English class system and its hypocrisies. An Inspector Calls and Look Back in Anger are companion investigations of the English class system: Priestley's through the mechanism of the mystery play and the inspector who exposes the Birlings' complicity; Osborne's through the mechanism of the angry young man who refuses to be absorbed by the class system that damaged him - 6Buy
Downton Abbey
Julian Fellowes·2010·Fellowes's television companion in the tradition of the British investigation of the upstairs-downstairs class relationship — the Crawley family and the servants who serve them. An Inspector Calls and Downton Abbey are companion investigations of the British class system's relationship between the wealthy and those who serve them, but from opposite political positions: Priestley's play indicts the wealthy for their complicity in the damage they do to the powerless; Fellowes's series treats the class system with nostalgic affection - 7Buy
North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell·1854·Gaskell's companion in the tradition of the British literary investigation of the relationship between employers and workers — Margaret Hale in the industrial North, John Thornton, and the mill workers. North and South and An Inspector Calls are companion investigations of the moral responsibilities of the wealthy toward the poor: Gaskell's more novelistic and focused on individual transformation; Priestley's more theatrical and organized around collective responsibility - 8Buy
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro·1989·Ishiguro's companion in the tradition of the British literary investigation of the question of individual moral responsibility in the context of class and loyalty — Stevens the butler's account of his service to Lord Darlington. The Remains of the Day and An Inspector Calls are companion investigations of moral evasion: both are about people who fail to take responsibility for the damage done by their service to those above them in the class hierarchy
An Inspector Calls — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Inspector Goole a real inspector in An Inspector Calls?
The play deliberately refuses to answer this question, and the deliberate ambiguity is central to its meaning. The evidence that Inspector Goole is not a real inspector: no one at the police station has heard of him; the photograph he shows each family member separately (each of whom identifies it as Eva Smith) may not be the same photograph; and when Arthur Birling calls the Chief Constable after the inspector leaves, he is told there is no Inspector Goole on the force. The evidence that something stranger is happening: the inspector arrives with knowledge that no real inspector could have, and the ending — in which the phone rings and a real inspector announces he is coming to investigate the death of a girl — suggests a supernatural loop. Priestley's own statements about the play suggest that Inspector Goole represents a kind of conscience, or prophetic voice — a figure who knows what the Birlings have done and what they will refuse to learn from it. Whether he is a ghost, a time traveler, a collective conscience, or simply an anomaly the play refuses to explain is deliberately left for the audience to decide.
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