Harold Brighouse
Harold Brighouse was an English playwright and novelist, born on July 26, 1882, in Eccles, Lancashire. He is best known for his dramatic works that often depicted the lives of working-class individuals, reflecting the environment in which he was raised. After graduating from Manchester Grammar School and working in his family's cotton business, Brighouse transitioned into writing, with his first play, *The Doorway,* produced in 1909. He became a prominent drama critic for the *Manchester Guardian* and served as an intelligence officer during World War I.
Brighouse's most notable work is *Hobson's Choice*, which premiered in 1915 and is celebrated for its comedic yet serious portrayal of lower-middle-class life. The play centers on a strong-willed daughter manipulating her male-centric father, ultimately leading to her independence. Although *Hobson's Choice* faced initial rejection by London theaters, it has since become a staple in American and British theater. Brighouse was versatile in his writing, producing both serious and light-hearted dramas, but is particularly recognized for his focus on working-class themes, as seen in other works like *The Northerners* and *The Game*. His writing peaked in the 1920s, although his later works were sometimes criticized for sentimentality.
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Harold Brighouse
Fiction Writer and Playwright
- Born: July 26, 1882
- Birthplace: Eccles, Lancashire, England
- Died: July 25, 1958
Biography
Although he published eight novels in his lifetime, Harold Brighouse is remembered mostly for his drama, which often focused on working-class people much like those among whom he was raised in Eccles, Lancashire, England, where he was born on July 26, 1882. His family ran a cotton business in Eccles where he worked after graduation from the Manchester Grammar School. He married in 1905 and, in 1909 saw the production of his first play, The Doorway, after he became associated with the Manchester school of dramatists. He embarked on a long career as a drama critic for Manchester’s Guardian in 1913, continuing to write reviews for that newspaper until 1949. During World War I, he was an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force. After the war ended, he moved to London, where he collaborated on some publications with John Walton. In the early 1930’s, he became the London correspondent for New York’s Drama magazine.
Brighouse was particularly adept at writing one-act plays, although his full-length plays brought him his greatest recognition. His most celebrated work is Hobson’s Choice, which premiered in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1915. Ironically, this play, based on Brighouse’s novel by the same title, was rejected by Oscar Asche and other London theater moguls. It is currently the only one of over a hundred Brighouse plays that is regularly performed in the United States and Great Britain. In 1954, it was made into a successful film starring Charles Laughton and Wendy Hiller. A revival of Hobson’s Choice was presented at the National Theater in the 1970’s.
This play is a domestic comedy focusing on lower-middle-class lives. It features a stubborn shoemaker, a prototypical male chauvinist. His daughter, Maggie, is bright and resourceful. She derives great satisfaction from manipulating her father. Eventually she marries his best worker, whereupon the young couple sets up a shoe store of their own, severely undercutting her father’s livelihood. Although the play has serious social content, it remains light-hearted and diverting, never pontificating to convey its message.
It is apparent that Brighouse was a great admirer of O’Neill, who had a profound effect on his own writing. Like O’Neill, Brighouse was extremely versatile, capable of writing serious social drama as well as light comic drama, romantic drama, and farces. His most fervent and successful writing, however, is that dealing with the working class, as reflected in a play like The Northerners, which is about the Luddite riots that took place in the 1820’s. In The Game, Brighouse focuses is on another type of working-class character, the professional football player. Brighouse’s work reached its zenith in the 1920’s. His later output was competent, but not brilliant, largely because it often lapsed into sentimentality, an affliction absent from his earlier plays.