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Senate House Library

J.B. Priestley Collection

The Collection

Subject: English literature

123 printed works by and about the Yorkshire writer J. B. Priestley (1894-1984; see ODNB). The range of Priestley’s work was unusually broad and the collection covers its entirety, from novels, plays and journalism to biography, history and criticism. The texts, from substantial monographs to pamphlets, comprise above all first and other distinctive editions. Some works are present in more than one edition, others not at all. Priestley appears mainly as author, but also as co-author (with his wife, Jacquetta Hawkes, with George Billam and with Hugh Walpole), as editor, and as introducer (Joseph Bató’s Defiant City). Some translations testify to international interest in Priestley, notably Parceiros da ilusao (1988), a Brazilian edition of Lost Empires

This is a growing collection. It was conceived as an offshoot of the comprehensive J.B. Priestley Archive at the University of Bradford, for the convenience of its members and others interested in Priestley or in any area of his activity in the south of England. Several items in the collection formerly belonged to the author’s son, Thomas Priestley; to the J.B. Priestley Society or members of it; or to Bradford’s J. B. Priestley Archive.

Access 

For an overview of the collection, do a mixed classmark search on [J.B.P.]. The collection is held off-site and material requires 48 hours (excluding weekends) to be fetched. 

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