Author: Christopher Isherwood
Profile: Christopher Isherwood was an Anglo-American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, diarist and autobiographer. He was born in Wyberslegh Hall, High Lanem, Cheshire, UK and died in Santa Monica, California, U.S. He completed is education at Repton School, Derbyshire, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge King’s College, London. His partner’s were Heinz Neddermeyer and John Bachardy. Some of his most notable works include The Berlin Stories, A Single Man and Christopher and His Kind. He was born to Kathleen (mother) and Frank Isherwood (father). Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was the name they chose for their first son which Isherwood later on streamlined to Christopher Isherwood on becoming a citizen of US in 1946.
Writing style: Christopher Isherwood’s writing style is highly concentrated and complex, which makes a lot of demands on the reader, however provides lively entertainment, at the same time.
Published Texts:
Works
1928 – All the Conspirators (new edition 1957 with new foreword)
1932 – The Memorial
1935 – Mr.Norris Changes Trains
1935 – The Dog Beneath the Skin
1937 – The Ascent of F6
1937 – Sally Bowles
1938 – On the Frontier
1938 – Lions and Shadows
1939 – Goodbye to Berlin
1939 – Journey to a War
1944 – Bhagavad Gita, The Song of God
1945 – Vedanta for Modern Man
1945 – Prater Violet
1945 – The Berlin Stories
Vedanta for the Western World
1949 – The Condor and the Cows
1951 – What Vedanta Means to Me
1954 – The World in the Evening
1962 – Down There on a Visit
1963 – An Approach to Vedanta
1964 – A Single Man
1965 – Ramakrishna and His Disciples
1966 – Exhumations
1967 – A Meeting by the River
1969 – Essentials of Vedanta
1971 – Kathleen and Frank
1973 – Frankenstein: The True Story
1976 – Christopher and His Kind
1980 – My Guru and His Disciple
1980 – October
1994 – The Mortmere Stories
1989 – Where Joy Resides: An Asherwood Reader
1996 – Diaries: 1939-1960
1997 – Jacob’s Hands: A Fable
2000 – Lost Years: A Memoir 1945-1951
2000 – Lions and Shadows
2005 – Kathleen and Christopher, Lisa Colletta
2007 – Isherwood on Writing
2010 – The Sixties: Diaries: 1960-1969
2012 – Liberation: Diaries: 1970-1983
2014 – The Animals: Love Letters Between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy
Translations
1930 – Charles Baudelaire, Intimate Journals
1947 – The Song of God: Bhagavad-Gita
1947 – Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination
1953 – How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorism of Patanjali
Awards and Acknowledgements:
The house in which Isherwood lived in Schoneberg district of Berlin bears a memorial plaque to mark his stay there from 1929 to 1933.
The lifelong relationship between Isherwood and Bachardy, is chronicled in the 2008 film Chris and Don.
A Single Man was adapted into a film A Single Man in 2009.
The BBC adapted, his autobiography, Christopher and His Kind, in 2010 into a television film.