Authors in ‘The Proletarian Writer’
‘The Proletarian Writer’ was part of a series, ‘The Writer in the Witness-Box’. This scripted discussion between George Orwell and Desmond Hawkins was broadcast on the BBC Home Service on the 6th December 1940, and the transcript was published in The Listener, on the 19th December 1940.
*
Authors, Titles and Literary Conventions
Mentioned in Orwell and Hawkins’ ‘The Proletarian Writer’
|
Author |
Titles or comments, or both |
Extraneous authors mentioned |
|
‘W. H. Davies was a proletarian, but he would not be called a proletarian writer. Paul Potts would be called a proletarian writer, but he is not a proletarian’ |
||
|
W. H. Davies |
||
|
Paul Potts |
||
|
Rupert Brooke |
||
|
‘… something new to say’ |
||
|
James Hanley |
||
|
Jack Common |
||
|
Jack Hilton |
||
|
Ford Madox Ford |
||
|
‘… recorded a kind of experience that simply had not got into print before’ |
||
|
D H Lawrence |
Sons and Lovers |
|
|
[Charles] Dickens |
||
|
[Karl] Marx |
||
|
[John Galsworthy] |
||
|
[Robert Tressell] |
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists |
|
|
Jack London |
||
|
Cyril Connolly |
||
|
[James] Joyce |
||
|
Lionel Britton |
Hunger and Love |
|
|
New Writing [magazine] |
||
|
Left Review [magazine] |
||
|
Edward Upward |
||
|
Christopher Caudwell |
||
|
Alec Brown |
||
|
Arthur Calder-Marshall |
||
|
Jack London |
The Road |
|
|
Jack Hilton |
Caliban Shrieks |
|
|
Jim Phelan |
prison books [e.g. Jail Journey] |
|
|
George Garrett [Matt Lowe] |
sea stories |
|
|
Private [Frank] Richards |
Old Soldier Sahib |
|
|
James Hanley |
Grey Children |
|
|
‘… the literature that the proletariat does read’ |
||
|
Home Chat [magazine] |
||
|
Exchange and Mart [magazine] |
||
|
Cage Birds [magazine] |
||
|
‘… the literature that really comes out of the people themselves’ |
||
|
Camp fire ballads |
||
|
Sea shanties |
||
|
Negro poems like ‘Stagolee’ |
||
|
Street broadsheets |
||
|
[Rudyard] Kipling |
‘Danny Deever’ |
|
|
Advertisement jingles |
||
|
Limericks |
||
|
Epitaphs |
||
|
Donald McGill |
Comic coloured postcards |
|
|
Army songs |
||
|
T.S. Eliot |
||
|
Names above may appear twice if they are mentioned with and without associated titles |
‘… there’s no doubt that it was a big step forward when the facts of working-class life were first got onto paper…
I think possibly the first book that did this was The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists; which has always seemed to me a wonderful book, although it is very clumsily written. It recorded things that were everyday experience but which simply had not been noticed before’
Leave a Reply