Read extracts from The Devil Inside Him and Personal Enemy

A pair of lost plays by John Osborne, written before he made theatrical history with Look Back in Anger, have been rediscovered almost 60 years since their brief appearance on stage.

The Devil Inside Him and Personal Enemy, which Osborne believed had been destroyed, show one of Britain’s most influential modern playwrights just as he was about to be hailed as one of the Angry Young Men — the writers who revolutionised British theatre in the late 1950s.

The plays were performed in 1950 and 1955 but so briefly that few were aware of them when Look Back in Anger shocked audiences on its opening night at the Royal Court Theatre on May 8, 1956. Kenneth Tynan, the most influential critic of the day, recognised that British theatre had found a new voice when he declared: “I doubt if I could love anyone who did not wish to see Look Back in Anger.”

Times Archive, 1968: The world of John Osborne

I can think of no other playwright who has earned the privileges that Osborne now enjoys

• Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court, 1956

• Leading article: Wrath at The Helm?

Related Links

• John Osborne: extracts from two plays

• Rediscovered plays may not get recognition

Osborne scholars had despaired of finding the two earlier plays. No trace of them existed in Osborne’s personal archive, despite the playwright’s reputation for keeping unimportant documents such as tailors’ receipts.

Jamie Andrews, head of modern literary manuscripts at the British Library, wondered if copies survived in the archive of the Lord Chamberlain, the senior official in the Royal Household who retained the power to censor plays until 1968.

They had survived, but had escaped the notice of other academics because of the idiosyncratic filing system adopted by the Lord Chamberlain’s staff at St James’s Palace. Osborne is listed at one point as “John Caborne”.

Mr Andrews, who was conducting research on Osborne for an exhibition at the library entitled The Golden Generation, discovered complete typewritten texts, heavily marked with the censor’s infamous blue pencil — passages of dialogue with references to homosexuality and blasphemy have been struck out.

Mr Andrews said that experts had assumed that the plays were lost because Osborne, who died in 1994, was emphatic in his autobiography that no copies existed.

The Devil Inside Him, which Osborne wrote with the help of his mistress Stella Linden, opened in Huddersfield in May 1950. It tells the story of Huw Prosser, an aspiring Welsh poet who, like Osborne, is branded as an outcast because of his refusal to conform.

John Heilpern, Osborne’s biographer, said that there was a striking resemblance between Prosser and Jimmy Porter, the protagonist of Look Back in Anger. “It’s an early step on the route to Jimmy Porter, which is consistent with a furious, bruised soul who doesn’t fit in,” he said.

Personal Enemy, an exploration of Cold War paranoia in 1940s and 1950s America, was produced in March 1955 in Harrogate, but was so heavily censored that it was destined to fail.

Mr Heilpern said that the discovery was exciting for Osborne enthusiasts, although he hoped that the plays would not be produced.

“They contain the seeds of the future. All the elements are there — a certain passion, a certain realism and a furious wronged hero. It would be great if they were undiscovered gems, but they’re not. As for the plays being produced, I think it would have been better if they had not been discovered.”

The Devil Inside Him and Personal Enemy will be published for the first time in Before Anger, by Oberon Books, on June 20.

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