John Wain, Hurry on Down

Nicolas Tredell (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication Oct 1953

Places

United Kingdom (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Hurry on Down

(1953) was the first novel by John Wain (1925-94), then a university lecturer who had previously published poetry and criticism and was also making a name as a broadcaster on BBC radio’s Third Programme with his series on contemporary fiction and poetry,

First Reading

(26 Apr-24 Sep 1953). Wain’s book can be seen as the inaugural novel of the literary “Movement” of the 1950s and as introducing a new kind of male anti-hero, a precursor of the “Angry Young Men” of the later 1950s epitomized by Jimmy Porter in the play

Look Back in Anger

(1956) by John Osborne (1929-94), and an example of the “outsider” anatomized in the 1956 literary and philosophical study of that title by Colin Wilson (1931-2013) – indeed, the term is used in

Hurry on Down

when its…

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4212 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "Hurry on Down". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 June 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35420, accessed 23 April 2024.]

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