Overview

The focus of this study is the collective of writers known variously as the Birmingham Group, the Birmingham School or the Birmingham Proletarian Writers who were active in the City of Birmingham in the decade prior to the Second World War. Their narratives chronicle the lived-experience of their fellow citizens in the urban manufacturing centre which had by this time become Britain’s second city. Presumed ‘guilty by association’ with a working-class literature considered overtly propagandistic, formally conservative, or merely the naive emulation of bourgeois realism, their narratives have in consequence suffered undue critical neglect. This book repudiates such assertions by arguing that their works not only contrast markedly with other examples of working-class writing produced in the 1930s but also prove themselves responsive to recent critical assessments seeking a more holistic and intersectional approach to issues of working-class identity.

Full Product Details

Author:   Robin Harriott
Publisher:   Springer International Publishing AG
Imprint:   Palgrave Macmillan
Edition:   1st ed. 2022
Weight:   0.529kg
ISBN:  

9783031143823

ISBN 10:   3031143825
Pages:   290
Publication Date:   15 October 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

1 Introduction: ‘They at Least Were Not Hybrids’. A Multiplicity in Unity: The Birmingham Writers and Their City. Shaping Influences: Finding the Exotic in the Everyday. ‘Going Over’: The Cultural Diaspora. ‘At last the British are Coming’: Prevailing and Contemporary Critiques of Working-Class Literature. The Ethnographic Turn. 2 This Working Life: Work and the Workplace. A Fellow Traveller? Henry Green: Birmingham’s Adoptive Proletarian. Walter Allen: ‘As a Film Director might present it’: Blind Man’s Ditch. ‘As Unpolitical a Man as I Have Ever Met’: Leslie Halward. Leslie Halward: ‘Belcher’s Hod’. 3 Feeling the Pinch: Unemployment. A Qualitative Deficit: Filling the Statistical Gap. Walter Brierley: Frustration and Bitterness: A Colliery Banksman. Walter Brierley: Means Test Man. John Hampson: ‘Man About the House’. Walter Allen: Innocence Is Drowned. 4 Writing Their Selves: Subjectivity and Representation in Birmingham Group Narrative. A Reluctant Collier? Walter Brierley: ‘Body’. Walter Brierley: Sandwichman. Leslie Halward: ‘A Broken Engagement’. Peter Chamberlain: An Eavesdropper’s Secrets: ‘Mr. Marris’ Reputation’ and ‘What the Hell?’. John Hampson: Saturday Night at the Greyhound. 5 Conclusion. Coda: Dispersal. The Legacy.

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Author Information

Robin Harriott holds the degrees of B.A. (Hons), M. Phil., and was recently (2021) awarded his PhD in English Literature from the University of Birmingham, UK. Formerly a teacher of English, he is now an independent researcher with interests in working-class writing and culture.

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