Context & Introduction

Understanding the context behind An Inspector Calls is absolutely essential at GCSE. J.B. Priestley deliberately set the play in 1912 but wrote it in 1945 — and the gap between those two dates is one of the most important things you can write about in the exam. This lesson covers Priestley's life, his political beliefs, and the world the Birlings inhabit.

J.B. Priestley: The Basics

Fact	Detail
Born	1894, Bradford, Yorkshire
Died	1984
Play written	1945
Play first performed	1945 (in Moscow), 1946 (in London)
Play set in	1912, in the fictional industrial city of Brumley
Genre	Well-made play / morality play / drawing-room drama
Political stance	Socialist — co-founded the Commonwealth Party

Priestley served in the trenches during World War I and was badly wounded. This experience shaped his belief that the class system was unjust and that ordinary people deserved better.

The Two Time Periods

The most important contextual fact about the play is the deliberate gap between when it is set and when it was written.

Feature	1912 (Setting)	1945 (Writing)
Social attitudes	Rigid class system; workers had few rights	Welfare state being planned; NHS on the way
Political climate	Liberal government; limited franchise	Labour landslide victory; collectivism
Key events ahead	Titanic sinking (1912), WWI (1914-18), WWII	WWII just ended; audiences knew the horrors
Workers' rights	Minimal — strikes were common but often crushed	Trade unions powerful; workers' rights growing
Gender roles	Women could not vote; limited legal rights	Women had proved themselves in wartime work
Birling's confidence	"Unsinkable" Titanic, no war coming	The audience knows he is catastrophically wrong

Examiner's tip: Whenever Birling makes a confident prediction — about the Titanic, about war, about progress — the 1945 audience would have known he was wrong. This dramatic irony is central to Priestley's message: people like Birling cannot be trusted to lead society.

Priestley's Political Beliefs

Priestley was a committed socialist. He believed in:

Collective responsibility — everyone in society has a duty to look after everyone else
The welfare state — public services like healthcare and education for all
Equality — breaking down the rigid class barriers that divided Edwardian England
Social justice — holding the privileged accountable for how they treat the vulnerable

In 1940, Priestley gave a series of BBC radio broadcasts called Postscripts that reached millions. He argued passionately for a fairer post-war Britain. The broadcasts were so popular — and so politically radical — that they were eventually taken off air, reportedly under pressure from Churchill's Conservative allies.

Examiner's tip: Priestley uses the Birling family as a vehicle for his socialist message. Each character represents a different response to social responsibility — from Birling's outright rejection to Sheila's acceptance.

Capitalism vs Socialism

This is the ideological battle at the heart of the play:

Capitalism (Birling's view)	Socialism (The Inspector's view)
"A man has to mind his own business and look after himself and his own" (Act 1)	"We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other" (Act 3)
Individual profit matters most	The community matters most
Workers are expendable resources	Workers are human beings with rights
Class hierarchy is natural and necessary	Class hierarchy is unjust and must be dismantled
Charity is optional and a sign of generosity	Social responsibility is a moral duty

Priestley presents Birling's capitalist views as selfish, short-sighted, and morally bankrupt. The Inspector's socialist message is presented as the moral truth of the play.

Edwardian England (1912)

The play is set in the Edwardian period, just before the upheavals of the First World War. Key features:

Class Structure

        Upper class (aristocracy / landed gentry)
                    |
        Upper middle class (industrialists like Birling)
                    |
        Lower middle class (clerks, shopkeepers)
                    |
        Working class (factory workers, servants)
                    |
        The poor / destitute (no safety net)

In 1912, there was no welfare state, no NHS, no unemployment benefit. If a worker lost their job, they could end up in the workhouse or on the streets. This is exactly what happens to Eva Smith.

Women in 1912

Women could not vote (the suffragette movement was active but had not yet succeeded)
Married women had limited legal rights over property
Working-class women were particularly vulnerable — few job options, low pay, no legal protections
A woman's reputation was everything; being seen as "immoral" could ruin her

Eva Smith's vulnerability as a working-class woman is central to the play.

The Well-Made Play

An Inspector Calls follows the conventions of a well-made play (piece bien faite), a theatrical form popular in the 19th century:

Convention	How the play uses it
Confined setting	The entire play takes place in the Birling dining room
Compressed time	The action unfolds in a single evening in real time
Progressive revelation	The Inspector reveals information gradually, building tension
A secret from the past	Each character's connection to Eva is hidden at the start
Climactic revelation	The final twist — was the Inspector real?
Unity of place and time	No scene changes, no time jumps

Priestley uses the well-made play form but subverts it with his political message — the "mystery" is not a whodunit but a moral investigation into social responsibility.

The Morality Play Tradition

An Inspector Calls also draws on the medieval morality play tradition:

In morality plays, characters represent abstract moral qualities (e.g. Vice, Virtue, Everyman)
The Inspector functions like a moral judge — perhaps representing conscience, God, or the voice of social justice
Each Birling family member is tested and must choose between accepting or rejecting moral responsibility
The play ends with a warning about what will happen if the lesson is not learned

Examiner's tip: Calling the play a "morality play" is an excellent way to demonstrate sophisticated understanding of form. You could write: "Priestley draws on the morality play tradition, positioning the Inspector as a quasi-divine figure who forces each character to confront their moral failings."

The Title: "An Inspector Calls"

The title is deliberately ambiguous:

"Inspector" — suggests a police investigation, but also a moral inspection
"Calls" — means "visits," but also echoes the idea of a "calling" (a vocation or moral duty)
The indefinite article "An" — not "The Inspector" but "An Inspector," suggesting he could be anyone, or that others will follow

Key Context Revision Checklist

Summary

An Inspector Calls was written by a socialist playwright who had survived the trenches and witnessed the enormous class divisions of early 20th-century Britain. By setting the play in 1912 and writing it in 1945, Priestley creates a devastating dramatic irony: the audience knows that Birling's confident predictions are wrong, that two world wars will shatter the old certainties, and that a fairer society is both possible and necessary. The play is a call to action — Priestley wants his 1945 audience to build the just society that the Birlings of 1912 refused to create.