The good companions - J.B. Priestley

‘Here indeed is a truly great novel, which so far from being dead and forgotten within a season or two will find more and more friends as the years pass by.’

This courageous prophecy by the Sunday Times has been entirely vindicated. Since The Good Companions was published over thirty years ago it has defied the cheap sneers of some highbrows with more than forty English editions and impressions alone. The reason is not difficult to find. Into this grand and positive pageant of English life Priestley packed as enchanting a cast of characters from the shires and towns of England as can be found in any work of Fielding or Dickens. The adventures in the theatrical world of Jess Oakroyd, probably the most lovable Yorkshireman in all literature, of Miss Trant, the ‘angel’ of the company, and of young Inigo Jollifant are plaited together into a story which is unforgettable.

Brimming with the idealism of youth, The Good Companions mirrors an England in which the barriers of sex, class, and age come tumbling down.