Authorial Context

• Arthur Miller is one of the most celebrated American playwrights of the 20th Century.
• Miller was born in 1915 to a middle-class Jewish family in New York City.
• He grew up in the neighbourhood of Brooklyn, his once-comfortable family struggling to cope financially after the onset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s.
• This experience of early poverty and struggle helped shape Miller’s worldview.
• His plays often explore the overwhelming economic and political forces which affect the fortunes of ordinary individuals trying, and at times tragically failing, to make their way in the world.
• Miller’s first stage success came in 1947 with All My Sons, a drama exploring one family’s turmoil after one of its sons is listed as ‘missing in action’ while fighting in World War 2.
• The play resonated with American audiences, many of whom had suffered their own wartime losses.
• Miller's next play, Death of a Salesman (1949), was an even bigger Broadway hit, earning him the Pulitzer Prize and national fame.
• Again, Miller had caught the mood of American audiences with a tale of one man’s struggles to fulfil his dreams in a rapidly changing society.
• After the success of Death of a Salesman, Miller became a prominent figure in American life during the 1950s.
• Miller married Marilyn Monroe, the most famous actress of the day, in 1956.
• The success of plays such as The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (1955) confirmed his reputation as a powerful social commentator.
• In 1952 Miller was called before the House of Un-American Activities, accused of being a Communist sympathiser.
• Despite the pressure placed upon him, he refused to give the names of friends to the committee, leading to his own punishment.
• Miller’s courage and principles earned him international respect and he became an outspoken defender of freedom for his fellow writers around the world.
• Miller died at his home in Connecticut in 2005.