Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller's extraordinary masterpiece, Death of a Salesman changed the course of modern theatre, and has lost none of its power as an examination of American life. In the spring of 1948, Arthur Miller retreated to a log cabin in Connecticut with the first two lines of a new play already fixed in his mind. He emerged six weeks later...

Arthur Miller's classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692—'one of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history'—and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950s. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia, and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a...

A View from the Bridge is a tragic masterpiece of the inexorable unravelling of a man. Eddie Carbone is a longshoreman and a straightforward man, with a strong sense of decency and honour. For Eddie, it's a privilege to take in his wife's cousins, newly arrived from Italy. However, as his niece begins to fall for one of them, it's...

Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be … when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am. Willy Loman is an ageing travelling salesman haunted, driven, and yet held back by empty dreams of prosperity and success. Justly celebrated as one of the most famous...

All My Sons brought Miller his first major success, and continues to be a bestseller today. In Joe and Kate Keller's family garden, an apple tree—a memorial to their son Larry, lost in the Second World War—has been torn down by a storm. But his loss is not the only part of the family's past they can't put behind them....

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name! In a small tight-knit community, gossip and rumour...

‘His drama is a piece of expert dramatic construction. Mr. Miller has woven his characters into a tangle of plot that springs naturally out of the circumstances of life today.’NEW YORK TIMES Three years on from the disappearance of his son, successful businessman Joe Keller has made a comfortable life for his family in America’s Midwest. Despite being accused of...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning tragedy of a salesman’s deferred American dreamA Penguin Classic Since it was first performed in 1949, Arthur Miller's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about the tragic shortcomings of an American dreamer has been recognised as a milestone of the theatre. Willy Loman, the protagonist of Death of a Salesman, has spent his life following the American way, living out...

The law is nature. The law is only a word for what has a right to happen. When the law is wrong it's because it's unnatural, but in this case it is natural and a river will drown you if you buck it now. Let her go. And bless her. Set among Italian-Americans on the Brooklyn waterfront, A View from...

The greatest American dramatist of our age. (Evening Standard) In this collected works, five of Arthur Miller's most-produced and popular plays are brought together in a new edition, alongside an exclusive introduction by Ivo van Hove, the celebrated contemporary director of Miller's works. All five plays were written by Miller within a ten-year period which began with his first Broadway...

‘Much like Mr. Miller, Quentin is a witness to alarming public and personal catastrophes: the stock market crash, the Holocaust, the McCarthy witchhunts and the self-destruction of a show business idol to whom he is married.’ NEW YORK TIMES Haunted by past romantic failures, Quentin, a New York City Jewish intellectual, retreats into his mind as he debates marrying for...

"The greatest American dramatist of our age" - Evening Standard In this second volume of collected works, four of Arthur Miller’s stage plays from the sixties and seventies are brought together in a new edition. Taking up the theme of individual responsibility from his earlier work, this volume also contains an introduction from Miller himself, along with two of his...

Jew is only the name we give to that stranger. Each man has his Jew; it is the other. And the Jews have their Jews. Arthur Miller’s largely forgotten masterpiece, Incident at Vichy, is a prescient examination of the evil that exists in us all. It was inspired by a real-life incident in France in which a Gentile gave a...

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New to Penguin Modern Classics, Focus is Arthur Miller's chilling debut novel. A reticent personnel manager living with his mother, Mr. Newman shares the prejudices of his times and of his neighbours. Neither a Hispanic woman abused outside his window nor the persecution of the Jewish store owner from whom he buys his paper are any of his business. This...

Miller's provocative play about a guilt-ridden man, fighting his inner demons. Quentin is a successful lawyer in New York, but inside his head he is struggling with his own sense of guilt and the shadows of his past relationships. One of these is an ill-fated marriage to the charming and beautiful Maggie, who went from operating a switchboard to become...