James Hanley: Modernism and the Working Class
(Hardback)
Publishing Details
James Hanley: Modernism and the Working Class
By (Author) John Fordham
University of Wales Press
University of Wales Press
6th March 2003
United Kingdom
Classifications
Tertiary Education
Non Fiction
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000
Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers
823.912
Physical Properties
Hardback
256
Width 138mm, Height 216mm
567g
Description
James Hanley (1901-1985) was brought up in Liverpool and worked as a merchant seaman before becoming a professional writer. The first of his twenty-four novels, Drift, was published in 1930. In this wide-ranging study of Hanley's life and writings, John Fordham argues that, although Hanley's work is most commonly identified with 'proletarian' realism, it should instead be thought of as a sustained engagement with modernism. Fordham discusses Hanley's relationship to London and the institutional culture of high modernism, as well as his association with his adopted country, Wales, where he lived for more than thirty years and which figures so importantly in his imagination. Through a close analysis of Hanley's writing and the social and cultural contexts of his work, Fordham demonstrates the importance of the category of class for understanding the literary history of modernism and shows how Hanley's work reveals the conflicting and contradictory aspects of modernist culture. James Hanley: Modernism and the Working Class is a ground-breaking analysis of this significant but neglected writer whose work opens the way to a new understanding of twentieth-century working-class writing.
Reviews
"fascinating and convincing...has implications for how we should consider other British working-class fiction" Readers Report ' ... deserves wide attention'. (English Studies) ' ... a book of impressive scholarship and scrupulous argument ... ' Planet 160 '...an excellent introduction to Hanley's writing and will be an indispensable point of reference for future criticism of Hanley...Readers of this fine study...will be united in praising its seriousness, its intellectual range, and its success in its central act of reclamation on Hanley's behalf.' Literature & History
Author Bio
John Fordham teaches at Northumbria University. He has published widely on James Hanley, Welsh writing in English, working class writing and the literary history of modernism.
