Love On The Dole

(Paperback)

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Description

'As a novel it stands very high, but it is in its qualities as a "social document" that its great value lies' Times Literary Supplement In Hanky Park, near Salford, Harry and Sally Hardcastle grow up in a society preoccupied with grinding poverty, exploited by bookies and pawnbrokers, bullied by petty officials and living in constant fear of the dole queue and the Means Test. His love affair with a local girl ends in a shotgun marriage, and, disowned by his family, Harry is tempted by crime. Sally, meanwhile, falls in love with Larry Meath, a self-educated Marxist. But Larry is a sick man and there are other more powerful rivals for her affection.

Reviews

"Being conceived in suffering and written in blood, it profoundly moves its audience." The Times "Not for nothing did Edith Sitwell claim that she could not recall being "so deeply, so terribly moved" as when reading this story. An evocative portrayal of life in depression-era Britain." The Guardian "One of the earliest and best novels to call for social change in Britain" Dazed Digital

Author Bio

Walter Greenwood was born in 1903 at Salford in Lancashire. He was educated first at Langworthy Road Council School, Salford, and then by himself. He began part-time work as a milkroundsman's boy when he was twelve, then worked, again part-time, with a pawnbroker, before leaving school at the age of thirteen. He later worked as an office boy, a stable boy, a clerk, a packing case maker, a sign-writer, a car-driver, a warehouseman, and a salesman, never earning more than thirty-five shillings a week except while working for a few months in an automobile factory. He was on the 'dole' at least three times. Love on the Dole, his first novel, was accepted for publication in 1932, and when it appeared in 1933 it was at once recognized as a classic. He published ten more novels, a volume of short stories and his autobiography, There Was a Time. He also wrote plays, several of which have been filmed. Walter Greenwood died in 1974.