Reading Order
Look Back in Anger Reading Order
Look Back in Anger (1956) by John Osborne is the play that changed British theater — the Royal Court production on May 8, 1956 is usually identified as the beginning of a new era in British drama, the arrival of the 'angry young man' and the emergence of a working-class voice on the British stage. Jimmy Porter, his wife Alison, their friend Cliff, and later Alison's friend Helena share a cramped attic flat in the English Midlands; Jimmy's rage against the class system, against complacency, against everything, fills the play and everyone in it. The play is harder than the myth: Jimmy's anger is real but also performed; his victims (Alison especially) are also his accomplices; the play's emotional structure is more complex than the 'angry young man' label suggests. Osborne was himself from a working-class background and had worked as a jobbing actor; the play drew on his own experience of class resentment and is organized around the specific rage of a man who is more educated and more perceptive than the system will accommodate.
Where to start
Look Back in Anger (1956) — the complete text. Best Osborne reading order: Look Back in Anger → The Entertainer → Inadmissible Evidence → A Patriot for Me
Complete Look Back in Anger Book List
- 1Buy
Look Back in Anger
John Osborne·1956·The complete play — Jimmy and Alison in their flat, and the arrival of Helena. The play that changed British theater; the first production starred Kenneth Haigh and Mary Ure at the Royal Court Theatre under George Devine's direction - 2Buy
The Entertainer
John Osborne·1957·Osborne's companion about Archie Rice — a failing music-hall comedian playing to dwindling audiences in a fading England at the time of Suez. The companion investigation of the British class system from the perspective of those left behind by postwar prosperity; Laurence Olivier played Archie Rice in the first production - 3Buy
Roots
Arnold Wesker·1959·Wesker's companion in the British working-class drama tradition — Beatie Bryant returning from London to her Norfolk farming family, full of ideas about socialism and self-improvement. The companion play in the kitchen-sink tradition to Look Back in Anger: both organized around a figure who has been educated out of their class background and who returns to find they no longer belong there - 4Buy
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
Alan Sillitoe·1958·Sillitoe's companion novel in the 'angry young man' tradition — Arthur Seaton at the lathe and on the weekends in Nottingham. The companion prose work to Look Back in Anger as an investigation of the same class rage from the same period and the same social position - 5Buy
The Room at the Top
John Braine·1957·Braine's companion in the angry young man tradition — Joe Lampton's ambition to escape his working-class origins and the price he pays. The companion novel investigation of the same class dynamics from a more cynical perspective: where Jimmy Porter rages against the class system, Joe Lampton tries to climb it - 6Buy
Inadmissible Evidence
John Osborne·1964·Osborne's companion play about Bill Maitland — a solicitor in middle age who is disintegrating. The companion Osborne play as an investigation of the same rage from the same class position, but twenty years on: where Jimmy Porter is young and full of potential fury, Bill Maitland is middle-aged and the fury has become self-destruction - 7Buy
A Taste of Honey
Shelagh Delaney·1958·Delaney's companion play about Jo — a young working-class woman in Manchester, her absent mother, her Black boyfriend who leaves, and her gay friend Geof. The companion play in the British working-class drama tradition to Look Back in Anger, written when Delaney was eighteen after seeing an inferior play at the theater and deciding she could do better; it is organized around the same class awareness but from a female perspective that Look Back in Anger consistently and deliberately refuses - 8Buy
Osborne: A Life
John Heilpern·2006·The major biography of Osborne. The companion life-of as an investigation of how the plays emerged from the specific circumstances of Osborne's life: his working-class origins, his marriages (five of them), his relationship to the Royal Court, and his gradual fall from his position as the most important playwright of his generation
Look Back in Anger — Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Look Back in Anger important?
Look Back in Anger is important because it arrived at precisely the moment when the British theater needed it — in 1956, the West End was still dominated by drawing-room comedies and well-made plays about upper-class life, and the Royal Court's production of Osborne's play was a provocation: a working-class man (Jimmy Porter) at the center of a play, speaking in an idiom that had not been heard on the British stage. The play's influence was enormous: within a few years, the Royal Court and the Theater Workshop had produced the first plays of Arnold Wesker, Shelagh Delaney, Edward Bond, David Storey, and many others. The term 'angry young man' was applied to Osborne and to his contemporaries in fiction (Kingsley Amis, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe), and the play became the symbol of a generational shift in British culture.
Is Look Back in Anger a feminist play?
Look Back in Anger is decidedly not a feminist play, and this is one of the most important things about it. Jimmy Porter is a bully: his anger is real, his class resentment is justified, his perception of hypocrisy is accurate — and he directs all of it at Alison, who bears the brunt of his fury while ironing his shirts. The play is aware of this double standard (Cliff and Helena both react to Jimmy's treatment of Alison), but it does not resolve it: Alison comes back to Jimmy at the end, and the play's emotional logic endorses the relationship. Osborne's subsequent plays (especially Inadmissible Evidence) show a deepening awareness of the misogyny that runs through Look Back in Anger, but the play itself belongs to its moment: it is a play about class by a man who was far more aware of class than of gender.
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