Greene, Graham
Entry updated 9 September 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1904-1991) UK author, partner of Dorothy Glover (see David Craigie) between 1939 and 1948; almost none of his more famous tales – which include Stamboul Train (1932; vt Orient Express 1933), Brighton Rock (1938), The Power and the Glory (1940), The Third Man (1949) and The Quiet American (1955) – contains fantastic elements. He is of moderate sf interest for his second novel, The Name of Action (1930), an Alternate History set in very Near Future Trier (ie Germany), which is already under the thumb of a dictator; at the climax of the tale he is deposed and flees abroad. The distinction Greene made until fairly late in his career between novels and "entertainments" seems not to have been applied to The Name of Action, as he soon began to omit this title from lists of his published works.
Some of Greene's short stories, like "The End of the Party" (January 1932 London Mercury), are horror; "The Lieutenant Died Last" (29 June 1940 Collier's Magazine) served (distantly) as the basis for the Hitler Wins film Went the Day Well? (1942) directed by Alberto Cavalcanti. Monsignor Quixote (1982) replays in twentieth-century guise Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605; 1615) without quite entering the water margins of the fantastic. [JC]
Henry Graham Greene
born Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire: 2 October 1904
died Vevey, Switzerland: 3 April 1991
works (highly selected)
- The Name of Action (London: William Heinemann, 1930) [hb/nonpictorial]
- Monsignor Quixote (Toronto, Ontario: Lester and Orpen Publishers, 1982) [hb/N R Jackson]
collections and stories
- The Little Train (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1946) [graph: illus/hb/Dorothy Craigie]
- The Little Fire Engine (London: Max Parrish and Company, 1950) [graph: illus/hb/Dorothy Craigie]
- The Little Horse Bus (London: Max Parrish and Company, 1952) [graph: illus/hb/Dorothy Craigie]
- The Little Steamroller (London: Max Parrish and Company, 1953) [graph: illus/hb/Dorothy Craigie]
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