Working Class British Literature of the Mid 20th Century

This might be of interest to some of you:

Back in the 1980s Ken Worpole wrote 'Dockers & Detectives', a fantastic review of the reading habits of the mid-20th century British working class which also studied working class authors of the 1930s/1940s. It is a wonderful book. Here is a description of it:

"Ken Worpole in his ground-breaking book Dockers and Detectives, analysed the appeal of “hardboiled” US crime novels of the 1930s to an industrial working class that failed to identify with the tamed domesticity of the home counties.

This pioneering study of twentieth-century working class reading and writing in Britain helped revive a number of literary reputations, such as those of Alexander Baron and James Hanley, as well as distinguishing distinct regional literary cultures and narrative styles still existing in Britain.

Dockers and Detectives was Ken Worpole’s first book, and the first edition was widely reviewed and praised. Dockers and Detectives appears on many UK course lists and is regularly quoted as an important source in any other book on literature in the 1930s and 40s.

Ken Worpole is the author of a number of books on architecture, landscape and social history, including Last Landscapes and Here Comes the Sun. He writes regularly for the Guardian, Prospect, Times Higher Education Supplement and other papers.

‘…one of the shrewdest and sharpest observers of the English social landscape’ — the Independent

‘Dockers and Detectives can be read with profit by anyone concerned with the sociology of reading. Ken Worpole is the kind of enthusiast who encourages one to seek out and read the books he describes.’ — The Bookseller

‘What makes 'Dockers & Detectives' a good read is the quality of intelligent thoughtfulness that suffuses the book... He succeeds in making the reader want to rush out and read the books he is discussing because he tells a story well, and that in itself is still rare in books about literature.' — City Limits"


The book is available through Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dockers-Detectives-Ken-Worpole/dp/1905512376

I would recommend it to anyone interested in this period of literature. As one internet reviewer put it:
"Dockers and Detectives is one of those rare books that not only entertains and informs you, but also opens up new paths of literary discovery. I think that I’d probably have got round to Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain without Worpole, but not as quickly and without seeing their influence on French existentialism. I’m not so sure I would have discovered Alexander Baron’s From the City, From the Plough or Stuart Hood’s wartime memoir Pebbles From My Skull, though."

Ken's book has inspired numerous readers: whenever I meet people who share my interest in this period, they have always read this book.

P.S. Let's open up this for general discussion of working class British literature of the period.

That sounds very interesting, thanks for the tip!

I must admit my list of British authors is quite thin. Not quite sure why this is, but there you have it. I think I would struggle to even name British authors from that period, except maybe for William Golding and the chap who wrote The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner... Sillitoe was it? I'm much more up on films from that time, I really enjoy the British 'kitchen sink' dramas of the 50s and 60s (This Sporting Life, The L-Shaped Room, Alfie, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, etc). Of course, most of those would have been based on books, although I think quite a few were also based on plays.

The writers you mention (the whole 'kitchen sink' scene) are often seen as the first flowering of British working class literature. Worpole concentrates on an earlier generation. It includes some amazing writers such as James Hanley (ex merchant seaman and author of the highly-controversial 'Boy', published in 1933, about a boy who runs away to sea and faces sexual abuse etc) and Alexander Baron (my favourite). Many of the writers featured in Worpole's book came from an East London Jewish background.

not really 'working class' authors per se but about working class life, 'Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie' and 'As I walked out one mid summer morning' are both good as is George Orwell's 'The road to wigan pier', Sillitoe did great stuff met him a few years ago at a book signing, a very nice man.
For film 'The Leather Boys' is great and was banned for a while, 'Up the junction' is also good as are the classics already mentioned.

Being a bit of an awkward sod, I have deliberately never read Orwell. I tried Lee, didn't like his stuff.

Orwell is well worth reading, and might be seen as essential for understanding British life in the thirties. Some of his novels from the period are a bit slow perhaps but do give an insight into life then and I found them enjoyable and informative. Keep The Aspidistra Flying for instance. His social commentaries like The Road To Wigan Pier, and Down and Out In Paris and London, are masterpieces of the form.

But it's his essays which really lift a lid on life then. The Decline Of the British Murder goes into the themes of thirties detective fiction which you mention, and his breadth of interests ranging across literature, politics, and social commentary make him in many people's opinions the best British essayist since Hazlitt.