With around thirty novels, J.B. Priestley is a major twentieth-century novelist. His reputation as a dramatist, essayist and general man of letters has tended to obscure his solid and highly interesting achievement as a novelist. This monograph is the first to be wholly devoted to Priestley's novels and short stories, organised in large groups determined by theme and attitude, while not neglecting his narrative technique. The middle decades of the twentieth century, which he has helped to shape, come alive in this tracing of their fictional recreation by Priestley. Contents: Introduction -- Escape -- People and work -- The past and the present -- Shades of gothic -- Dimensions of crime -- Visions and fantasies -- Rebellion and commitment -- Subversion and disengagement -- Retrospect: lines of development.