Christopher Isherwood author page

Christopher Isherwood biography

Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) was an English novelist, playwright and screenwriter. He studied at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, but left without taking a degree.

He is best known for the semi-autobiographical works Mr Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1939), novels set in Weimar-era Berlin. These books later inspired John Van Druten’s play I Am a Camera and the musical Cabaret.

During the 1930s he collaborated with poet W. H. Auden, co-writing plays such as The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935) and On the Frontier (1938).

Isherwood emigrated to the United States in 1939, settling in California, where he pursued a career in Hollywood screenwriting while continuing to write fiction and memoir. His later novels include A Single Man (1964), which was adapted into a feature film in 2009, and A Meeting by the River (1967).

His autobiography Christopher and His Kind was published in 1976, providing a candid account of his years in Berlin from 1929 to 1939.