Green, Henry

Green, Henry, 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); studies by R. S. Ryf (1967) and N. Shepley (2016).

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