An Inspector Calls

An Inspector Calls is a modern morality play and drawing room play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley. It was first performed in the Soviet Union in May 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 in 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 working-class woman in her mid-twenties. The play is notable amongst students as many British and international schools study it as a prescribed text for the GCSE and IGCSE English Literature courses.