An Inspector Calls

An Inspector Calls is a modern morality play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in the Soviet Union in 1945 and at the New Theatre in London the following year. It is one of Priestley's best-known works for the stage and is considered to be one of the classics of mid-20th century English theatre. The play's success and reputation were boosted by a successful revival by English director Stephen Daldry for the National Theatre in 1992 and a tour of the UK in 2011–2012. The play is a three-act drama which takes place on a single night on 5 April 1912. The play focuses on the prosperous upper middle-class Birling family, who live in a comfortable home in the fictional town of Brumley, "an industrial city in the north Midlands." The family is visited by a man calling himself Inspector Goole, who questions the family about the suicide of a young working-class woman in her mid-twenties. Long considered part of the repertory of classic drawing-room theatre, the play has also been hailed as a scathing criticism of the hypocrisies of Victorian and Edwardian English society and as an expression of Priestley's socialist political principles. The play is studied in many British schools as one of the prescribed texts for the English Literature GCSE. Synopsis Set in 1912, at the Birlings' large home in the industrial town of Brumley, Arthur Birling, who is a wealthy factory owner and local politician, celebrates his daughter Sheila's engagement to a rival magnate's son, Gerald Croft. Also in attendance are Birling's wife Sybil and their young, alcoholic son Eric (whose drinking problem the family discreetly ignores). Following dinner, Birling lectures them on the importance of self-reliance and looking after one's own, and talks of the bright future that awaits them (which, he believes, will include a place for himself on the next honours list). While the men confabulate, Sheila and Sybil leave the dining room to go into their Drawing Room. The evening is interrupted by the arrival of a man calling himself Inspector Goole, who is investigating the suicide of a young woman named Eva Smith. Her diary, the Inspector explains, refers to members of the Birling family. Goole produces a photograph of Smith and shows it to Birling, who acknowledges that she worked in one of his factories. He admits to having dismissed her for leading strike action with most of the female workers demanding equal pay to males.