Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood

Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (1904-1986), Anglo-American writer, born in Disley, Cheshire, England, and educated at the University of Cambridge. His experience as a tutor in Berlin from 1928 to 1933 provided the background for two volumes of short stories, The Last of Mr. Norris (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939). The two collections describe the seedy lives of a group of Berliners and expatriates who fail to foresee the dramatic impact the Nazis eventually have on German society. The books were reissued together in 1946 as The Berlin Stories and were later adapted as a play, I Am a Camera (1951; film, 1955) and as a musical, Cabaret (1966; film, 1972). In collaboration with the poet W. H. Auden, Isherwood wrote three experimental plays: The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood settled in the United States in 1939. Several of his subsequent novels—such as Prater Violet (1945), Down There on a Visit (1962), and A Meeting by the River (1967)—are concerned with the experience of sensitive individuals in incongruous settings and circumstances. The Essentials of the Vedanta (1969) expresses his deep interest in Hindu philosophy (see Hinduism). His biographical works include Lions and Shadows (1938), an account of his early life and his experiences at the University of Cambridge, and Kathleen and Frank (1972), a joint biography of his parents. With Christopher and His Kind (1976), a witty and utterly frank account of his life from 1929 to 1939, Isherwood revealed his homosexuality and its overriding importance in his work.