James Hanley (September 3, [[1897] - November 11, 1985) was an Irish novelist. is the 246th day of the year (247th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... November 11 is the 315th day of the year (316th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 50 days remaining. ... Year 1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link displays 1985 Gregorian calendar). ... A novel is an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction, usually in story form; the writer of a novel is a novelist. ...

Born in Liverpool to a working class family, Hanley left school early and took to sea at the age of 13. This was a formative influence and the sea influenced his writing as much as it influenced Joseph Conrad. When he returned to Britain he moved to London in 1924 and began working in a number of jobs before settling as a journalist, writing bleak, spare novels based on his experiences in the meantime. // Joseph Conrad (born Teodor Józef Konrad Nałęcz-Korzeniowski, 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish-born novelist who spent most of his adult life in Britain. ...

His second novel, Boy, was praised by William Faulkner amongst others, but was suppressed for 'obscenity'. This led to a famous court case which Hanley lost. The novel was not republished until 1982 (in a Horizon Press edition). The first unexpurgated edition appeared in 1990, published by Andre Deutsch with an introduction by Anthony Burgess. William Cuthbert Faulkner (September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American novelist and poet whose works feature his native state of Mississippi. ... Year 1982 (MCMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar). ... Anthony Burgess (February 25, 1917 – November 22, 1993) was an English novelist, critic and composer. ...

Partly as a result of the libel case, Hanley moved to Wales, where he began The Furys, a sequence of novels about working-class life in the twentieth century. This was highly praised by John Cowper Powys, with whom Hanley had become friends (Hanley later wrote a monograph on Powys' work). This article is about the country. ... (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s The 20th century lasted from 1901 to 2000 in the Gregorian calendar (often from (1900 to 1999 in common usage). ... John Cowper Powys (October 8, 1872 - June 17, 1963) was a British (English-Welsh) writer, lecturer, and philosopher. ...

During the war, Hanley moved back to London to experience the worst of the blitz: this led to his novel No Directions (which was published with an introduction by Henry Miller). He moved back to Wales and finished The Furys in 1956. In the 1960s he concentrated on writing critically acclaimed plays for TV and radio. However he returned to the novel form in the 1970s, writing works including A Woman in the Sky and The Kingdom, which some of his admirers see as being amongst his best. Due to his bleak subject matter and occasional use of experimental techniques, Hanley never had much commercial success, but he has always had critical acclaim. Henry Miller photo taken by Carl Van Vechten, 1940 Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American writer and, to a lesser extent, painter. ... 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1960 calendar). ... 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday. ...

Selected works

• What Farrar Saw (1946) Nicholson.^[1]
• A Dream Journey (1976) Horizon Press. ISBN 0-8180-0623-4
• The Furys (1993) Penguin. ISBN 0-14-018507-0
• Boy (1992) Penguin. ISBN 0-14-018490-2
• The Ocean (1999) Harvill Press. ISBN 1-86046-675-3

Critical study

Fordham, J. (2004) James Hanley: Modernism and the Working Class. University of Wales Press. ISBN 0-7083-1755-3

Footnotes

1. ^ Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers, 140. 

Everett Franklin Bleiler (born 1920) is an editor and bibliographer of science fiction and Fantasy. ...

External link

• The Official James Hanley Website.