Introduction

Abstract

To a writer who incorporates the incidents of his life into the subject matter of his fiction, personal history and the historical events he has lived through become more important than they are to those who, seemingly, have objectified aspects of their lives in their works. Such is the case of Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood, a member of that generation of writers who came of age too late for World War I and too early for World War II. For those born into the turbulent twentieth century, change would prove more problematic than promising, the self the only stable element in the world.

Critics, like Virginia Woolf, who reproached our generation for writing too directly out of a sense of public duty, failed to see that public events had swamped our personal lives and usurped our personal experience.

-Stephen Spender

Everything that you are must affect your writing.

-Christopher Isherwood