All My Sons

‘His drama is a piece of expert dramatic construction. Mr. Miller has woven his characters into a tangle of plot that springs naturally out of the circumstances of life today.’
NEW YORK TIMES

Three years on from the disappearance of his son, successful businessman Joe Keller has made a comfortable life for his family in America’s Midwest: despite being accused of supplying defective aircraft equipment in World War 2, he is altogether happy. But, when a shadowy figure from Joe’s past returns, his hidden truths are revealed, and the price of the American Dream is laid bare.

Miller's first successful play on Broadway, All My Sons launched his career and established him as one of America’s greatest dramatists, also winning him the 1946 Tony Award for Best Author. An incisive indictment of greed, capitalism and self-interest, All My Sons is remembered as one of the playwright’s greatest works.

This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Clare Gleitman, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director Jeremy Herrin) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.

Arthur Miller (1915-2005) was arguably the greatest American playwright of the twentieth century. Hist most famous work for the stage includes Death of a Salesman, The Crucible, All My Sons and A View from the Bridge. Six volumes of his plays and a volume of his theatre essays are published by Methuen Drama.

Clare Gleitman (volume editor) is Dean of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of English at Ithaca College, USA. She is the author of Anxious Masculinity in Arthur Miller and Beyond: Salesmen, Sluggers, and Big Daddies (Bloomsbury, 2022). She has also published articles on Arthur Miller, Bertolt Brecht, Tennessee Williams, Brian Friel and Tony Kushner, among others, which have appeared in such journals as Comparative Drama, Eire/Ireland, Modern Drama and the Arthur Miller Journal. At Ithaca College, she is also the director and co-founder of the On the Verge play-reading series and former coordinator of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Susan C. W. Abbotson (series editor) is Professor of Dramatic Literature at Rhode Island College, USA.