Description: John Osborne, who died in 1994, will be remembered as the playwright who liberated modern British drama from genteel explorations of upper-middle class life. He opened doors to English social and political realities that few authors since Shaw have presented on stage. Each essay chapter in the volume deals in depth with an important Osborne play. Gilleman's book analyzes Osborne's reception and proposes an argument about his aesthetics. This book is sectioned so as to evoke the divisions of a "well made play" suggesting that "Osborne, the playwright" is perhaps his own best creation. The text includes the quick and perturbing rise to success, the masterworks, the slow descent with a number of relative failures, and the apt resolution with a play that returned to the opening scene of Osborne's career.

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