Green, Henry
Related Category: English Literature, 20th cent. to the Present: Biographies
pseud. of
Henry Vincent Yorke, 1905–73, English novelist. Born to an aristocratic family, he was the longtime managing director of his family's industrial engineering business in London. His nine novels, with laconic titles such as
Party Going (1939),
Nothing (1950), and
Doting (1952), are as brilliantly original as they are tantalizing and enigmatic. Viewing human failures and inadequacies in an essentially comic light, Green achieves his unique effects through techniques normally reserved for poetry, relying on allusion, symbolism, and imagery. His most representative works are
Living (1929),
Caught (1943),
Loving (1945), and
Concluding (1948). A number of Green's short stories were published posthumously in
Surviving (1992).
See his memoir Pack My Bag (1952); J. Treglown, Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green (2001); study by R. S. Ryf (1967).