Profile of Henry Green

Henry Green was born Henry Vincent Yorke in 1905 in Tewkesbury, England. His father was an industrialist and his mother had an aristocratic background. In his 1940 memoir "Pack My Bag”, he described himself as having been "born a mouthbreather with a silver spoon”.

His first novel, "Blindness’, was published at the age of nineteen while still an undergraduate at Oxford, which he left before his final exams to work on the factory floor of his father’s firm in the Midlands – this double life of industrialist and writer continued throughout his life.

Immediately influenced by the visceral language of the factory floor, Green wrote "Living” in 1929 – regarded as a masterpiece novel of the working classes. John Updike has said of him that while other writers were cutting from the same cloth Green was weaving the cloth himself, which might partially explain the drifting in and out of the literary consciousness of Green’s writing. LP Hartley described Green – along with Woolf and DH Lawrence as being "the last true magi of the English language,’ and, while being an admirer and influenced by Woolf, ultimately Green was unique and is one of the truly original voices of the twentieth century.

A master of dialogue and character, it is, however, Green’s imagery which is the most startling aspect of his talent. His 1939 novel "Party Going” contains some of his most sublime imagery. In total Green wrote 9 novels, "Nothing” being his penultimate book (written in 1950). Each of his books is as diverse as the next with Green’s genius and artistry unswerving whether he is writing about bright young things, factory workers or geese. An unpretentious writer Green loathed publicity and talking about his art. His last book, "Doting” was published in 1952 and he lived the last twenty years of his life as a semi recluse at his home in Knightsbridge not writing another book, as he thought the effort, for him, too great. He died in 1973 at the age of sixty eight.