Graham Greene's Entertainments

Graham Greene: The Complete Entertainments (Folio Society, 1996)
[Stamboul Train; A Gun for Sale; The Confidential Agent; The Ministry of Fear; The Third Man; Our Man in Havana]

Until roughly the mid-1960s, Graham Greene kept up a distinction between "novels" and "entertainments" in listings of his fiction. As you can see from the Folio Society boxset above, there are at least 6 of these, written over a period of three decades.

But is that collection really complete? I fear not. A quick glance at the "by the same author" page of some of his mid-career books reveals the following works listed under this heading:

1. Stamboul Train: An Entertainment (1932)
2. A Gun for Sale (1936)
3. The Confidential Agent: An Entertainment (1939)
4. The Ministry of Fear: An Entertainment (1943)
5. The Third Man and the Fallen Idol (1950)
6. Loser Takes All (1955)
7. Our Man in Havana: An Entertainment (1958)

These, at any rate, are the canonical entertainments. Personally, I'd feel inclined to expand the list as follows, if it weren't for the fact that he'd stopped using the term by the time of Travels with my Aunt:

1. Travels with My Aunt (1969)
2. Doctor Fischer of Geneva (1980)
3. Monsignor Quixote (1982)
4. The Tenth Man (1937 / 1985)
5. No Man's Land (1950 / 2005)

Graham Greene: The Complete Entertainments / The Great Novels (Folio Society, 1996-1997)
[Brighton Rock; The Power and the Glory; The Heart of the Matter; The End of the Affair; The Quiet American; A Burnt-Out Case]

But what exactly constituted an "entertainment" for Greene? It seems to have been what would normally be called a thriller. Set side by side, in twin boxsets, with what the Folio Society refers to as the "Great Novels", I guess one can see a certain additional gravitas and sense of purpose about the latter. Brighton Rock is a thriller, too, but a kind of metaphysical one - where the dangerous and violent action is subordinate to the state of the characters' souls.

Graham Greene: Omnibus I (Heinemann Octopus, 1977)
[The Heart of the Matter / Orient Express {= Stamboul Train} / A Burnt-out Case / The Third Man / The Quiet American / Loser Takes All / The Power and the Glory]

Other attempts to collect large numbers of his novels together - in the Heinemann Octopus omnibus series, for instance - ignore the distinction altogether: as did Greene himself in his later years.

Graham Greene: Omnibus II (Heinemann Octopus, 1981)
[Brighton Rock / The End of the Affair / It's a Battlefield / England Made Me / The Ministry of Fear / Our Man in Havana]

•

Graham Greene: Rumour at Nightfall (1931)

I have, admittedly written a number of posts about Graham Greene already. There was a general one, "Greeneland", in 2019; then (more recently) a post about his 1957 anthology The Spy's Bedside Book. He continues to fascinate me, but lately my preoccupation has come to focus on this crucial (or completely accidental and meretricious, as his later abandonment of it would imply) distinction between serious "novels" and frivolous "entertainments" in his work.

Graham Greene: The Name of Action (1931)

Maybe it all goes back to that famous gap - the soul-crushing hiatus between The Man Within (1929) and Stamboul Train (1932). In his 1979 interview with Marie-Françoise Allain, he says of the two (later suppressed) novels he wrote during that period:

The Name of Action and Rumour at Nightfall, were bad because the romantic young author I was at the time was too recognizable in the characters. A writer has to conform to two conflicting requirements: he must be involved in his novel and detached from himself. One detaches oneself in the course of merging into the characters. One doesn’t think, ‘Would I do this or that?’ One notes that ‘Smith has done it’. One doesn’t even say, ‘How would Smith react in this or that situation?’ because Smith acts on his own account. One simply forgets one’s own existence. It’s not so much a question of taking leave of oneself, if you like; it’s more a case of taking leave of one’s conscious ‘I’.

But that wasn't his only reason for forbidding them from being reprinted:

My first books were very bad, full of metaphors which I chose for their extravagance, influenced as I was by my readings in the twenties, when I was very attached to the English Metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century, who devoted themselves to highly complex rhetorical exercises. Today my early novels horrify me, they’re so absurd. There’s nothing worse than poetic prose.

Marie-Françoise Allain: The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene (1983)

Marie-Françoise Allain then comes out and asks the question directly:

Have you suppressed the distinction between your ‘entertainments’ and your novels in order to escape an excessive popularity?

No. I established the distinction originally in order to escape ‘melodrama’. I’ve subsequently concluded that melodrama isn’t all that baneful. Anyway I told myself — wrongly as it happens — that if I occasionally wrote what in England is termed a thriller, in the manner of John Buchan’s The Thirty-nine Steps, which I greatly admired, the ensuing novel might be free of melodrama. I started making this distinction with A Gun for Sale. I’d even considered writing under another name, but my publisher warned me, ‘We can’t give you more than a £50 advance, because in that case you’re a new writer on the market.’ So I gave up the idea and classed the novel as an ‘entertainment’. The last one to be conceived in this category was The Ministry of Fear. After that, novels and entertainments resembled each other more and more. Brighton Rock, for instance, started in my mind as a thriller. From the first sentence, my intention was to write a crime novel, but the novel eventually moved in quite a different direction. But the most absurd case, I think, is The Quiet American. I recently came across the manuscript, which one of my publishers kept in his safe. The first page is entitled, ‘Novel Number Thirteen — Entertainment’. I really can’t understand how I could ever have seen this book as a simple thriller. I abandoned the dichotomy once and for all with Travels with my Aunt, for it served no further purpose.

There's a lot to be unpacked in this answer. Greene, as ever, is somewhat economical with the truth. Certainly it's true that from A Gun for Sale on, "Novels" [N] and "Entertainments" [E] alternate as if by clockwork:

1. [N]: England Made Me (1935)
2. [E]: A Gun for Sale (1936)
3. [N]: Brighton Rock (1938)
4. [E]: The Confidential Agent (1939)
5. [N]: The Power and the Glory (1940)
6. [E]: The Ministry of Fear (1943)
7. [N]: The Heart of the Matter (1948)
8. [E]: The Third Man [published with "The Fallen Idol"] (1949)
9. [N]: The End of the Affair (1951)
10. [E]: Loser Takes All (1955)
11. [N]: The Quiet American (1955)
12. [E]: Our Man in Havana (1958)
13. [N]: A Burnt-Out Case (1960)

After that the scheme started to founder, presumably as Greene began to question its utility. By now his writing in both categories was sober and spare enough to avoid the terrible accusation of containing samples of "poetic prose". The bitter-sweet comedy Our Man in Havana is the last to receive the designation "an entertainment." After that they're all "novels" in subsequent lists.

But are they all novels? As I've intimated above, I suspect that the category survived in the back of his mind somewhere. At any rate, this is how I myself (quite unofficially) would taxonomise the rest of his oeuvre:

1. [N]: The Comedians (1966)
2. [E]: Travels with My Aunt (1969)
3. [N]: The Honorary Consul (1973)
4. [N]: The Human Factor (1978)
5. [E]: Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party (1980)
6. [E]: Monsignor Quixote (1982)
7. [E]: The Tenth Man (1985)
8. [N]: The Captain and the Enemy (1988)
9. [E]: No Man's Land [published with "The Stranger's Hand"] (2005)

So far as Greene (and his publishers) were concerned, though, there were only ever seven "entertainments", and these were later folded back to be counted with the other canonical novels in the mid-1960s.

So far as I'm concerned, however, there are at least 12 works in the present list of 27 novels (or long-form novellas) which constitutes his collected fiction - excluding the short stories, which are a different matter entirely - which could easily be classified as "entertainments."

But of course that begs the question of what these works actually meant to Greene, why he needed them at all? Luckily for us, Marie-Françoise Allain was there to ask him:

These flights into the fantastic, into what you call ‘fantasy’, to which you return, notably in Doctor Fischer of Geneva, what do they represent for you?

I don’t really know. Perhaps you’re right: I’m escaping. For example, if one can remember an entire dream, the result is a sense of entertainment sufficiently marked to give one the illusion of being catapulted into a different world. One finds oneself remote from one’s conscious preoccupations.

Graham Greene: England Made Me (1931)

What in your work is the proportion of ‘entertainment’ to these ‘conscious preoccupations’?

I really couldn’t say. In my earlier books I didn’t permit myself many of these flights. The sense of entertainment crops up for the first time in Stamboul Train, and more markedly in England Made Me, but it doesn’t come fully into the open until after 1945. I’ve noticed, in working on the introductions to the collected editions, that all my humorous stories date from the Second World War, as though the proximity of death provoked this irresistible urge to laugh and to ‘unwind’. Travels with my Aunt was also written when I was well up in my sixties, in the awareness that I was gradually approaching the wall that does not give way.

That's very interesting, very interesting indeed. We've heard from Greene, earlier in the interview, that the point of his entertainments was to enable him "to escape ‘melodrama'". He also says that it was to avoid the "metaphors which I chose for their extravagance" which he used to employ so readily in the 1920s.

Today my early novels horrify me, they’re so absurd. There’s nothing worse than poetic prose.

Now he's saying that they also served as an outlet for humour and fantasy: "the illusion of being catapulted into a different world."

It's a bit hard to see how all of these things can be true at once. When you add to them the statement that "the proximity of death provoked this irresistible urge to laugh and to ‘unwind’", you begin to wonder seriously if he isn't just taking the piss.

But logic-chopping aside, there's another way to see it. These (so-called) entertainments do seem to have offered Greene a way of making light of death. And the fact that they tend to take place in the dream-worlds of screen melodrama or postcard foreign parts also serves to sever them from the more serious implications of weightier works such as The Power and the Glory or The Quiet American.

Graham Greene: A World of My Own: A Dream Diary (1992)

Greene did, after all, compile his own 800-page dream diary, extracts from which were published after his death as A World of My Own. He clearly put a lot of stock in them. They accorded, too, with his omnipresent desire to escape - signalled in the title of his second volume of autobiography:

Graham Greene: Ways of Escape (1992)

Escape from what, you may ask? From depression, I suppose - from guilt, from responsibility, from the dreary sameness of England and all it stood for ... This, after all, was the man who recorded a series of early experiments with playing Russian Roulette in his first autobiographical volume, A Sort of Life.

Graham Greene: A Sense of Reality (1963)

The novella-length story "Under the Garden" which opens his 1963 short story collection A Sense of Reality heralds - paradoxically enough - a plunge "into fantasy, dreams, false memories and imagination."

The crucial significance of this story is picked up on by the ever-astute Marie-Françoise Allain:

Do you not yourself cultivate this sense of the unreal which these unexpected developments bring about? One has the feeling that your stories are sometimes tales for adults written for your own benefit. I am thinking especially of that strange story in which a sick man returns to the home of his childhood and sees, as he is about to go to sleep, the adventures of the little boy who had gone for a walk ‘under the garden’. What is the meaning of this dream inside a dream about a dream? Is it just a story which you took pleasure in writing?

Oh, I never ‘take pleasure in writing’. But I did perhaps free myself temporarily from the tensions of reality, or rather from too realistic a way of writing. No doubt I wanted to go back to my childhood, because the house depicted in "Under the Garden" is similar to the one in which we spent our summer holidays. There was also a pond with an island in the middle — and when I went back many years later, like the narrator in the story, I discovered that there was no need for a raft or a boat to take one across to the island. A jump was all that was needed, for the pond was scarcely bigger than a puddle. The gardener, on the other hand, was still the real gardener. I make the same sort of escape in a passage in The Human Factor in which Castle, the adoptive father, tells his son the story of the dragon which hides on the Common and only comes out in order to visit him in school. I never knew a dragon, but as a small boy, I knew of plenty of caves which might have been its lair, because the Common was riddled with trenches dating back to the First World War.

Perhaps the true significance of this story, first published in 1960, two years after the last official "entertainment", was to signal that that category was no longer needed because it had taken over. There would be no more entertainments - not because such works were to be reclassified as novels from now on, but because the dream of escape had grown capacious enough to swallow up all other forms of fiction.

Graham Greene: Under the Garden (1963)

•

Anthony Palliser: Graham Greene. National Portrait Gallery (1981-83)

Henry Graham Greene
(1904-1991)

Books I own are marked in bold:

Fiction:


1. The Man Within (1929)
   • The Man Within. 1929. Uniform Edition. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1952.
2. The Name of Action (1930)
   • The Name of Action. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1930.
3. Rumour at Nightfall (1931)
4. Stamboul Train [aka "Orient Express"] (1932)
   • Stamboul Train: An Entertainment. 1932. The Library Edition of the Works of Graham Greene. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1959.
   • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus I. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1977.
5. It's a Battlefield (1934)
   • It's a Battlefield. 1934. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1953.
   • It's a Battlefield. 1934. Introduction by the Author. The Collected Edition, 2. London: William Heinemann / The Bodley Head, 1970.
   • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus II. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1981.
6. England Made Me [aka "The Shipwrecked"] (1935)
   • England Made Me. 1935. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1954.
   • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus II. 1981.
7. A Gun for Sale [aka "This Gun for Hire"] (1936)
   • A Gun for Sale. 1936. Introduction by the Author. The Collected Edition, 9. London: William Heinemann / The Bodley Head, 1973.
8. Brighton Rock (1938)
   • Brighton Rock. 1938. Uniform Edition. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1947.
   • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus II. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1981.
9. The Confidential Agent (1939)
   • The Confidential Agent: An Entertainment. 1939. Harmondsworth: Penguin / London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1976.
10. The Power and the Glory [aka "The Labyrinthine Ways"] (1940)
    • The Power and the Glory. 1940. The Vanguard Library, 3. London: William Heinemann Ltd. / Chatto & Windus Ltd., 1954.
    • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus I. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1977.
11. The Ministry of Fear (1943)
    • The Ministry of Fear: An Entertainment. 1943. Uniform Edition. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1956.
    • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus II. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1981.
12. The Heart of the Matter (1948)
    • The Heart of the Matter. 1948. London: The Reprint Society Ltd. / William Heinemann Ltd., 1950.
    • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus I. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1977.
13. The Third Man [published with "The Fallen Idol"] (1949)
    • The Third Man and the Fallen Idol. Prefaces by the Author. 1950. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1955.
    • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus I. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1977.
14. The End of the Affair (1951)
    • The End of the Affair. 1951. Harmondsworth: Penguin / London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1978.
    • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus II. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1981.
15. Loser Takes All (1955)
    • Loser Takes All. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1955.
    • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus I. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1977.
16. The Quiet American (1955)
    • The Quiet American. 1955. World Books. London: The Reprint Society Ltd. / William Heinemann Ltd., 1957.
    • The Quiet American: Text and Criticism. 1955. Ed. John Clark Pratt. The Viking Critical Library. New York: Penguin, 1996.
    • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus I. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1977.
17. Our Man in Havana (1958)
    • Our Man in Havana: An Entertainment. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1958.
    • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus II. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1981.
18. A Burnt-Out Case (1960)
    • A Burnt-Out Case. 1961. London: The Reprint Society Ltd. / William Heinemann Ltd., 1962.
    • Included in: Heinemann Octopus Omnibus I. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1977.
19. The Comedians (1966)
    • The Comedians. 1966. Melbourne: Readers Book Club, 165. / London: William The Companion Book Club, 1967.
20. Travels with My Aunt (1969)
    • Travels with My Aunt. 1969. Harmondsworth: Penguin / London: The Bodley Head, 1972.
21. The Honorary Consul (1973)
    • The Honorary Consul. 1973. London: Book Club Associates / The Bodley Head, 1974.
22. The Human Factor (1978)
    • The Human Factor. 1978. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
23. Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party (1980)
    • Doctor Fischer of Geneva, or The Bomb Party. London: The Bodley Head, 1980.
24. Monsignor Quixote (1982)
    • Monsignor Quixote. 1982. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
25. The Tenth Man (1985)
    • The Tenth Man. 1985. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
26. The Captain and the Enemy (1988)
    • The Captain and the Enemy. 1988. Harmondsworth: Penguin / London: Reinhardt Books Ltd., 1989.
27. No Man's Land [published with "The Stranger's Hand"] (2005)
    • No Man's Land. Ed. James Sexton. Foreword by David Lodge. Hesperus Modern Voices. London: Hesperus Press Limited, 2005.

Collected Editions:


28. The Bodley Head Collected Edition. 22 vols. London: William Heinemann / The Bodley Head, 1970-1983.
    1. Brighton Rock (1938)
    2. It's a Battlefield (1934)
    3. England Made Me (1935)
    4. Our Man in Havana (1958)
    5. The Power and the Glory (1940)
    6. The Heart of the Matter (1948)
    7. The Confidential Agent (1939)
    8. The Collected Stories (1972)
    9. A Gun for Sale (1936)
    10. The Ministry of Fear (1943)
    11. The Quiet American (1955)
    12. Stamboul Train (1932)
    13. The End of the Affair (1951)
    14. A Burnt-Out Case (1960)
    15. The Man Within (1929)
    16. The Third Man & Loser Takes All (1949 & 1955)
    17. The Comedians (1966)
    18. Journey Without Maps (1936)
    19. The Lawless Roads (1939)
    20. Travels with my Aunt (1969)
    21. The Honorary Consul (1973)
    22. The Human Factor (1978)
29. Heinemann Octopus Omnibus I (1977)
    • The Heart of the Matter / Stamboul Train / A Burnt-out Case / The Third Man / The Quiet American / Loser Takes All / The Power and the Glory. 1948, 1932, 1961, 1950, 1955, 1955, 1940. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1977.
30. Heinemann Octopus Omnibus II (1981)
    • Brighton Rock / The End of the Affair / It's a Battlefield / England Made Me / The Ministry of Fear / Our Man in Havana. 1938, 1951, 1934, 1935, 1943, 1958. London: William Heinemann Limited / Octopus Books Limited, 1981.
31. The Complete Entertainments (London: The Folio Society, 1996)
    1. Stamboul Train (1932)
    2. A Gun for Sale (1936)
    3. The Confidential Agent (1939)
    4. The Ministry of Fear (1943)
    5. The Third Man (1950)
    6. Our Man in Havana (1958)
32. The Great Novels (London: The Folio Society, 1997)
    1. Brighton Rock (1938)
    2. The Power and the Glory (1940)
    3. The Heart of the Matter (1948)
    4. The End of the Affair (1951)
    5. The Quiet American (1955)
    6. A Burnt-Out Case (1961)

Short Stories:


33. The Bear Fell Free [1935a]
34. The Basement Room [1935b]
    1. The Basement Room
    2. The End of the Party
    3. The Second Death
    4. I Spy
    5. Proof Positive
    6. A Day Saved
    7. A Chance For Mr Lever
    8. Jubilee
35. Nineteen Stories [1947]
    1. The End of the Party
    2. The Second Death
    3. Proof Positive
    4. I Spy
    5. A Day Saved
    6. Jubilee
    7. Brother
    8. A Chance For Mr Lever
    9. The Basement Room [aka "The Fallen Idol"]
    10. The Other Side of the Border
    11. The Innocent
    12. A Drive in the Country
    13. Across the Bridge
    14. A Little Place Off the Edgware Road
    15. The Case for the Defence
    16. The Lottery Ticket
    17. Alas, Poor Maling
    18. Men at Work
    19. When Greek Meets Greek [aka "Her Uncle Versus His Father"]
36. Twenty-One Stories [1954]
    1. The End of the Party
    2. The Second Death
    3. Proof Positive
    4. I Spy
    5. A Day Saved
    6. Jubilee
    7. Brother
    8. A Chance For Mr Lever
    9. The Basement Room [aka "The Fallen Idol"]
    10. The Innocent
    11. A Drive in the Country
    12. Across the Bridge
    13. A Little Place Off the Edgware Road
    14. The Case for the Defence
    15. Alas, Poor Maling
    16. Men at Work
    17. When Greek Meets Greek [aka "Her Uncle Versus His Father"]
    18. The Hint of an Explanation
    19. The Blue Film
    20. Special Duties [aka "A Peculiar Affair of Westbourne Grove"]
    21. The Destructors
    • Twenty-One Stories. 1947 & 1954. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
37. A Visit to Morin [1960]
38. A Sense of Reality [1963]
    1. Under the Garden
    2. A Visit to Morin
    3. Dream of a Strange Land
    4. A Discovery in the Woods
    • A Sense of Reality. 1963. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
39. May We Borrow Your Husband? [1967]
    1. May We Borrow Your Husband?
    2. Beauty
    3. Chagrin in Three Parts
    4. The Over-night Bag
    5. Mortmain
    6. Cheap in August
    7. A Shocking Accident
    8. The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen
    9. Awful When You Think of It
    10. Doctor Crombie
    11. The Root of All Evil
    12. Two Gentle People
    • May We Borrow Your Husband? And Other Comedies of the Sexual Life. London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1967.
40. Collected Stories [1972]
    1. Twenty-One Stories (1954)
    2. A Sense of Reality (1963)
    3. May We Borrow Your Husband? (1967)
41. How Father Quixote Became a Monsignor [chapter one of Monsignor Quixote (1982)] [1980]
42. The New House [1988]
43. The Last Word and Other Stories [1990]
    1. The Last Word
    2. The News in English
    3. The Moment of Truth
    4. The Man Who Stole the Eiffel Tower
    5. The Lieutenant Died Last
    6. A Branch of the Service
    7. An Old Man's Memory
    8. The Lottery Ticket
    9. The New House
    10. Work Not in Progress
    11. Murder for the Wrong Reason
    12. An Appointment With the General
    • The Last Word and Other Stories. 1990. Harmondsworth: Penguin / London: Reinhardt Books Ltd., 1991.
44. The Complete Short Stories [2005]
    1. Twenty-One Stories (1954)
    2. A Sense of Reality (1963)
    3. May We Borrow Your Husband? (1967)
    4. The Last Word (1990)
    5. The Blessing
    6. Church Militant
    7. Dear Dr Falkenheim
    8. The Other Side of the Border
    • The Complete Short Stories. 1954, 1963, 1967, 1990. Introduction by Pico Iyer. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2005.

Stories:


1. The End of the Party (1929) [1935b] [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
2. The Second Death (1929) [1935b] [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
3. I Spy (1930) [1935b] [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
4. Proof Positive (1930) [1935b] [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
5. A Day Saved (1934) [1935b] [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
6. The Bear Fell Free [1935a]
7. The Basement Room [aka "The Fallen Idol"] (1935) [1935b] [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
8. A Chance For Mr Lever (1935) [1935b] [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
9. Jubilee (1935) [1935b] [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
10. Brother (1936) [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
11. The Other Side of the Border (1936) [1947] [2005]
12. The Innocent (1937) [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
13. A Drive in the Country (1937) [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
14. Across the Bridge (1938) [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
15. A Little Place Off the Edgware Road (1939) [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
16. The Case for the Defence (1939) [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
17. The Lottery Ticket (1940) [1947] [1990] [2005]
18. Alas, Poor Maling (1940) [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
19. Men at Work (1940) [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
20. When Greek Meets Greek [aka "Her Uncle Versus His Father"] (1941) [1947] [1954] [1972] [2005]
21. The Hint of an Explanation (1948) [1954] [1972] [2005]
22. The Stranger's Hand (1953) [No Man's Land (2005)]
23. The Blue Film (1954) [1954] [1972] [2005]
24. Special Duties [aka "A Peculiar Affair of Westbourne Grove"] (1954) [1954] [1972] [2005]
25. The Destructors (1954) [1954] [1972] [2005]
26. Church Militant (1956) [2005]
27. A Visit to Morin (1960) [1960] [1963] [1972] [2005]
28. Under the Garden (1963) [1963] [1972] [2005]
29. Dream of a Strange Land (1963) [1963] [1972] [2005]
30. A Discovery in the Woods (1963) [1963] [1972] [2005]
31. Dear Dr Falkenheim (1963) [2005]
32. The Blessing (1966) [2005]
33. May We Borrow Your Husband? (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
34. Beauty (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
35. Chagrin in Three Parts (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
36. The Over-night Bag (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
37. Mortmain (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
38. Cheap in August (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
39. A Shocking Accident (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
40. The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
41. Awful When You Think of It (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
42. Doctor Crombie (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
43. The Root of All Evil (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
44. Two Gentle People (1967) [1967] [1972] [2005]
45. How Father Quixote Became a Monsignor [chapter one of Monsignor Quixote (1982)] [1980]
46. The New House (1988) [1988] [1990] [2005]
47. The Last Word (1990) [1990] [2005]
48. The News in English (1990) [1990] [2005]
49. The Moment of Truth (1990) [1990] [2005]
50. The Man Who Stole the Eiffel Tower (1990) [1990] [2005]
51. The Lieutenant Died Last (1990) [1990] [2005]
52. A Branch of the Service (1990) [1990] [2005]
53. An Old Man's Memory (1990) [1990] [2005]
54. Work Not in Progress (1990) [1990] [2005]
55. Murder for the Wrong Reason (1990) [1990] [2005]
56. An Appointment With the General (1990) [1990] [2005]

Plays:


45. The Great Jowett (1939)
    • Included in: Collected Plays. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
46. The Living Room (1953)
    • Included in: Three Plays. London: The Heinemann Group of Publishers, 1962.
    • Included in: Collected Plays. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
47. The Potting Shed (1957)
    • Included in: Three Plays. London: The Heinemann Group of Publishers, 1962.
    • Included in: Collected Plays. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
48. The Complaisant Lover (1959)
    • Included in: Three Plays. London: The Heinemann Group of Publishers, 1962.
    • Included in: Collected Plays. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
49. Three Plays (1962)
    • Three Plays: The Living Room / The Potting Shed / The Complaisant Lover. 1953, 1957 & 1959. Mercury Books, 15. London: The Heinemann Group of Publishers, 1962.
50. Carving a Statue (1964)
    • Included in: Collected Plays. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
51. The Return of A.J. Raffles (1975)
    • >The Return of A. J. Raffles: An Edwardian Comedy in Three Acts Based Somewhat Loosely on E. W. Hornung’s Characters in The Amateur Cracksman. 1975. Penguin Plays. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
    • Included in: Collected Plays. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
52. Yes and No (1980)
    • Included in: Collected Plays. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
53. For Whom the Bell Chimes (1980)
    • Included in: Collected Plays. 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
54. Collected Plays (1983)
    • Collected Plays: The Living Room / The Potting Shed / The Complaisant Lover / Carving a Statue / The Return of A. J. Raffles / The Great Jowett / Yes and No / For Whom the Bell Chimes. 1953, 1957, 1959, 1964, 1975, 1939, 1980, 1983. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.

Screenplays:


55. The Future's in the Air (1937)
56. The New Britain (1940)
57. 21 Days [based on the play "The First and the Last" by John Galsworthy] (1940)
58. Brighton Rock (1947)
59. The Fallen Idol (1948)
60. The Third Man (1949)
    • The Third Man: A Film by Graham Greene and Carol Reed. 1968. Modern Film Scripts. London: Lorrimer Publishing Limited, 1969.
61. Loser Takes All (1956)
62. Saint Joan [based on the play by Bernard Shaw] (1957)
63. Our Man in Havana (1959)
64. The Comedians (1967)
65. Monsignor Quixote (1985)

Verse:


66. Babbling April (1925)
67. A Quick Look Behind: Footnotes to an Autobiography (1983)

Travel:


68. Journey Without Maps (1936)
    • Journey Without Maps: A Travel Book. 1936. Uniform Edition. London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1962.
69. The Lawless Roads [aka "Another Mexico"] (1939)
    • The Lawless Roads. 1939. Harmondsworth: Penguin / London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1971.
70. In Search of a Character: Two African Journals (1961)
    • In Search of a Character: Two African Journals. 1961. Harmondsworth: Penguin / London: The Bodley Head, 1977.
71. A Weed Among the Flowers (1990)

Autobiography:


72. A Sort of Life (1971)
    • A Sort of Life. 1971. Harmondsworth: Penguin / London: The Bodley Head, 1974.
73. Ways of Escape (1980)
    • Ways of Escape. 1980. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981.
74. Getting To Know The General: The Story of an Involvement (1984)
    • Getting to Know the General: The Story of an Involvement. London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1984.
75. A World of My Own: A Dream Diary (1992)
    • A World of My Own: A Dream Diary. 1992. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993.

Biography:


76. Lord Rochester's Monkey: Being the Life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1974)
    • Lord Rochester's Monkey: Being the life of John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester. London: The Bodley Head Limited, 1974.

Essays and criticism:


77. British Dramatists (1942)
78. Why Do I Write? An Exchange of Views between Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene and V.S. Pritchett (1948)
79. The Lost Childhood and Other Essays (1951)
    • The Lost Childhood and Other Essays. 1951. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode (Publishers) Ltd., 1954.
80. Collected Essays (1969)
    • Collected Essays. London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1969.
81. The Pleasure-Dome: The Collected Film Criticism, 1935–40. Ed. John Russell Taylor (1980)
    • The Pleasure-Dome: The Collected Film Criticism, 1935-40. Ed. John Russell Taylor. 1972. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.
82. J'Accuse: The Dark Side of Nice (1982)
    • J'Accuse: The Dark Side of Nice. London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1982.
83. Yours, etc.: Letters to the Press (1989)
    • Yours, etc.: Letters to the Press, 1945-89. Ed. Christopher Hawtree. Viking. London: Reinhardt Books Ltd. / Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989.
84. Reflections on Travels With My Aunt (1989)
85. Why the Epigraph? (1989)
86. Reflections (1991)
    • Reflections. Ed. Judith Adamson. London: Reinhardt Books, 1990.
87. The Graham Greene Film Reader: Reviews, Essays, Interviews and Film Stories [aka "Mornings in the Dark: The Graham Greene Film Reader"]. Ed. David Parkinson (1993)
88. Articles of Faith: The Collected Tablet Journalism of Graham Greene. Ed. Ian Thomson (2006)

Children's books:


89. The Little Train. Illustrated by Dorothy Craigie (1946) / Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone (1973)
90. The Little Fire Engine. Illustrated by Dorothy Craigie (1950) / Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone (1973)
91. The Little Horse Bus. Illustrated by Dorothy Craigie (1952) / Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone (1974)
92. The Little Steamroller. Illustrated by Dorothy Craigie (1953) / Illustrated by Edward Ardizzone (1974)

Edited:


93. The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands (1934)
    • The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands. 1934. Oxford Paperbacks. London: Oxford University Press, 1984.
94. [with Hugh Greene] The Spy's Bedside Book (1957)
    • [with Hugh Greene] The Spy's Bedside Book. 1957. Introduction by Stella Rimington. Illustrated by Nick Hardcastle. London: The Folio Society, 2006.
95. An Impossible Woman: The Memories of Dottoressa Moor of Capri (1975)

Secondary:


96. Greene, Barbara. Too Late to Turn Back: Barbara and Graham Greene in Liberia. ['Land Benighted', 1938]. Introduction by Paul Theroux. 1981. Penguin Travel Library. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990.
97. Allain, Marie-Françoise. The Other Man: Conversations with Graham Greene. 1981. Trans. Guido Waldman. London: The Bodley Head Ltd., 1982.
98. Sherry, Norman. The Life of Graham Greene. 3 vols (1989-2004):
    1. 1904-1939. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1989.
    2. 1939-1955. 1994. New York: Viking Penguin, 1995.
    3. 1955-1991. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 2004.
99. Greene, Richard, ed. Graham Greene: A Life in Letters. 2007. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008.
100. Greene, Richard. Russian Roulette: The Life and Times of Graham Greene. Little, Brown. London: Little, Brown Book Group, 2020.

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Graham Greene: The Bodley Head Collected Edition. 22 vols (1970-83)

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