Arthur Miller was born in New York City in 1915 and studied at the University of Michigan. His plays include All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953), A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays (1955), After the Fall (1963), Incident at Vichy (1964), The Price (1968), The Creation of the World and Other Business (1972) and The American Clock. He has also written two novels, Focus (1945), and The Misfits, which was filmed in 1960, and the text for In Russia (1969), Chinese Encounters (1979), and In the Country (1977), three books of photographs by his wife, Inge Morath. His most recent works include a memoir, Timebends (1987), and the plays The Ride Down Mt. Morgan (1991), The Last Yankee (1993), Broken Glass (1993), which won the Olivier Award for Best Play of the London Season, and Mr. Peter's Connections (1998). He has twice won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and in 1949 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
Miller's chilling classic of collective paranoia and retribution, widely interpreted as a critique of Hoover's hysterical hunt for Communists in post-war America. In 1692, the forces of revenge and superstition envelop the town of Salem, Massachusetts, and eventually even the most upstanding and innocent of townspeople are forced to confess to witchcraft and denounce one another to save their own lives, as the hysterical fantasies of a group of young girls run wildly out of control. (Kirkus UK)