Caliban Shrieks

by Jack Hilton

From a childhood of poverty but deep joy and high-flying freedom, to the hard-knock reality of physical labour, and then the ideological idiocies of life of a solider, Caliban Shrieks takes its readers on a lyrical tour of life as a young man born into the first days of the 20th century.

Turned out of the war a vagrant -- seeing England from city to city, county to county -- before being tossed back into an uncertain cycle of working-class life as it unfolds in the post-war years, Hilton's autobiographical novel is both a brash, impassioned indictment of the conditions of the working-class, as it is a bold modernist retelling of the myth of wild men, disfigured, disenfranchised, and sold into slavery.

Lost to time, only to be rediscovered again in the Salford's Working Class Movement Library in 2022, Caliban Shrieks is a masterpiece of both modernist and working class literature, and continues to speak as angrily and impassioned today, as it did on its first rave publication in 1935.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, British Literature, 20th Century, Politics, Literature

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1935

About the author

Jack Hilton was a British novelist, essayist, and travel writer. His work often depicted working-class people and environments, especially those of northern England. Born into a working-class family, Hilton worked as a plasterer and was an active member of the plasterer’s union and the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement. After attending classes with the Workers Educational Association, he published his first book, the autobiographical Caliban Shrieks, in 1935. Hilton then attended Ruskin College, and eventually published a number of both fiction and nonfiction texts. He was acquainted with fellow working-class author Jack Common, socialist literary editor John Middleton Murray, and George Orwell. (Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Iain · Rating 3 out of 5]

How much you like this rediscovered political novel from 1935 will possibly depend on your political outlook. This is a cry for left wing socialism and although written 90 years ago, many of the points are still valid. The rich and powerful exploit the capitalist system and the poor suffer. Politicians were as full of empty promises and soundbites and inaction as they are today. If it makes you angry, like the author, it should. Out of print for many years due to the working class author being forced our of the elite literary world (also still a huge problem today) it deserves to be rediscovered and added to the canon of political essays from history. Whether its good enough to count as a 'classic' is a more debatable point, but it certainly has a raw power. 3.5 *

[David Black · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rochdale’s Jack Hilton (1900-83) was hailed in the 1930s as a great novelist by George Orwell and WH Auden, but died modestly and unacclaimed. For 80 years his novels have been virtually impossible to get hold of after they went out of print, the ownership of the publishing rights being unknown. Now, Hilton’s works are getting back into print, thanks to the literary detective work of Jack Chadwick, a 28-year-old bartender and aspiring writer who discovered Caliban Shrieks while visiting Salford’s Working Class Movement Library last year.

“Caliban Shrieks has this unique quality that I hadn’t come across before and I found it so compelling,” Chadwick told the Independent.

“It’s so raw, it feels like it’s coming to you from across the pub table.”

As BPC couldn’t find George Orwell’s review of Caliban Shrieks online, we did a paper-search and transcribed it.

Adelphi magazine, March 1935.

Caliban Shrieks by Jack Hilton

Reviewed by George Orwell

This witty and unusual book may be described as an autobiography without narrative. Mr Hilton lets us know, briefly and in passing, that he is a cotton operative who has been in and out of work for years past, that he served in France during the latter part of the war, and that he has also been on the road, been in prison, etc etc; but he wastes little time in explanations and none in description. In effect his book is a series of comments on life as it appears when one’s income is two pounds a week or less. Here, for instance, is Mr Hilton’s account of his own marriage:

Despite the obvious recognition of marriage’s disabilities, the bally thing took place. With it came, not the entrancing mysteries of the bedroom, nor the passionate soul-stirring of two sugar-candied Darby and Joans, but the practised resolve that, come what may, be the furnishers’ dues met or no, the rent paid or spent, we – the wife and I – would commemorate our marriage by having, every Sunday morn, ham and eggs, So it was we got one over on the poet, with his madness of love, the little dove birds, etc.

There are obvious disadvantages in this manner of writing — in particular, it assumes a width of experience which many readers would not possess. On the other hand, the book has a quality which the objective, descriptive kind of book almost invariably misses. It deals with its subject from the inside, and consequently it gives one, instead of a catalogue of facts relating to poverty, a vivid notion of what it feels like to be poor. All the time that one reads one seems to hear Mr Hilton’s voice, and what is more, one seems to hear the voices of the innumerable industrial workers whom he typifies. The humorous courage, the fearful realism and the utter imperviousness to middle-class ideals, which characterise the best type of industrial worker, are all implicit in Mr Hilton’s way of talking. This is one of those books that succeed in conveying a frame of mind, and that takes more doing than the’ mere telling of a story.

Books like this, which come from genuine workers and present a genuinely working-class outlook, are exceedingly rare and correspondingly important. They are the voices of a normally silent multitude. All over England, in every industrial town, there are men by scores of thousands whose attitude to life, if only they could express it, would be very much what Mr Hilton’s is. If all of them could get their thoughts on to paper they would change the whole consciousness of our race. Some of them try to do so, of course; but in almost every case, inevitably, what a mess they make of it! I knew a tramp once who was writing his autobiography. He was quite young, but he had had a most interesting life which included, among other things, a jail-escape in America, and he could talk about it entrancingly. But as soon as he took a pen in his hand he became not only boring beyond measure but utterly unintelligible. His prose style was modelled upon Peg’s Paper (“With a wild cry I sank in a stricken heap” etc), and his ineptitude with words was so great that after wading through two pages of laboured description you could not even be certain what he was attempting to describe. Looking back upon that autobiography and number of similar documents that I have seen, I realise what a considerable literary gift must have gone into the making of Mr Hilton’s book.

As to the sociological information that Mr Hilton provides, I have only one fault to find. He has evidently not been in the Casual Ward since the years just after the war, and he seems to have been taken in by the lie, widely published during the last few years, to the effect that casual paupers are now given a “warm meal” at midday. I could a tale unfold about those “warm meals”. Otherwise, all his facts are entirely accurate so far as I am able to judge, and his remarks on prison life, delivered with an extraordinary absence of malice, are some of the most interesting that I have read.
UPDATE - HAVING NOW READ THE BOOK HERE IS MY OWN REVIEW
Caliban Shrieks by Jack Hilton, with hew introductions by Andrew McMillan and Jack Chadwick.

Penguin, March 2024

Reviewed by David Black

Jack Hilton’s Caliban Shrieks, now back in print after 90 years, is a forgotten ‘modernist’ classic. Breaking the mold of the ‘working class novel’ (such as Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole, published in 1933), Hilton’s narrative cracks along without any dialogue between characters and with no character development apart from the protagonist’s own and his circumstances. As George Orwell put it, the book ‘deals with its subject from the inside, and consequently it gives one, instead of a catalogue of facts relating to poverty, a vivid notion of what it feels like to be poor.’

The story begins in Oldham, Lancashire, where Hilton was born in 1900. As a victim of bullying in childhood, Hilton identifies with Shakespeare’s Caliban: an outcast treated as ‘A freckled whelp hag-born – not honour’d with a human shape.’

‘From about five I began to have contact with my species, and the thing I remember most was the cruelty of it,’ he writes. He is aware from any early age that his class is being miseducated and prepared for a war by those who wouldn’t have to fight it. Schoolteachers especially:

‘What impartiality we got for history! Stories about little drummer boys’ valour, the minstrel boy and hearts of oak. The horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta, the glory of Nelson and Drake’s game of tiddlywinks – or was it bowls? ‘

Being too young for the army (as a 14 year-old apprentice at the start of the First World War), Hilton’s Caliban does a run of factory jobs. Of the ‘blasted reality in a cotton mill’, he writes:

‘Four walls, caged captivity, hellish noise, wheels going round, motion, speed, punches up the posterior to acclimatise you (golly, Mr Millowner’s daughter, marry me quick before I lose heart!)...What a price to pay for prestige; cotton the world and ruin the child! I was unbritish, got rebellious and, after a leathering from the jobber, ultimately fired as hopeless, much to my future benefit.’

In a subsequent job, as a washer turner on piece-work, Caliban learns the tricks of the trade:

‘Many were the times I took my gross of washers to the store room, had them booked and stole back with them under my bib. Such were the results of my earlier christian training.’

With the new war economy, workers become more ‘valued’ as national assets and thus less easy to sack:

‘As this dawned on me, my suppressed hatred of the browbeating foreman class, from whom I had received so much callousness, took concrete expression; I belted the old foreman...’

Caliban gets away with it and ‘escapes’ the factory by getting a job on the railway. This comes with the condition attached that he can only leave by joining the army, which he does in 1918. His reasons for doing so are attributed to a general ‘collapse of the youthful mind’ in the face of ‘jingo ditties’ and ‘Hang the Kaiser’ exhortations:

‘It had to be done, there was no escape...Played to the station, at the district barracks first barrage from a peppery colonel, given a regiment, a night at home, introduction to a tart, off the following day for training.’

Caliban describes his induction, training and embarkation in preparation for the ‘madhouse lunacy’ of trench warfare:

‘What honour had we on March 21st 1918? Five hours of fog, gas, cannonade, then attacked by mass hordes of beastly blondes. Dug in, yes, but not invincible, put on the run by overwhelming odds. Yes, British pluck on the run, demoralised, licked to a frazzle, from orderly retreat to a panic; yes, a panic born out of the hellish attack, too much for any human endurance. Civilisation, religion, what beastly tricks you get up to. Bow your heads in shame.’

Back from War, which he doen’t dwell on further, Caliban educates himself. Firstly by attending political debates:

‘Gallantry and British patriotism versus cowardice and conscientious objectionism seemed to be the two combating groups. Peculiarly, I was a freak in their midst, a silver-badger supporting with vote and energy labour pacifism. Oh yes, there was a reason; as a kid I’d had many pastings for carrying the coloured favours of socialism, Dad happened to be one, so I could not go over to the blue bloods. Nevertheless politics were to be the school whereby I grew a little out of my ignorance.’

Caliban’s intellectual curiousity even extends to an interest in the dismal pseudo-science of eugenics. But on reading further Caliban reflects that he shares too many of the traits in homo sapien types which the eugenicists, in their quest for ‘purity’, want to get rid of (by stopping them from breeding at the very least). Therefore, Caliban knows that by eugenic standards he can never be part of the ‘intelligentsia of culture... the super select race of oligarchic proportions’ (also, with an interest in sex and marriage, he is disinclined to comply by committing voluntary euthanasia or getting a vasectomy).

Having itchy feet in depression-hit Lancashire, Caliban hits the road and heads south. On his travels he gets to see those grand old British institutions associated with the tramping profession: the Sally-Army sixpence-a-night flophouse, the workhouse (a.k.a. the ‘spike’), the flea-ridden boarding house, and the unwelcoming rectory run by the Tory god-botherer who thinks bread, margarine and stewed tea are a just reward for a day’s work. On life ‘underneath the arches’ of London he writes:

‘London, the Embankment, the Charing Cross and Waterloo of life’s incompatibles... The home away from home, the killer of egoism, the gathering of affinities. .. All ‘stoney’, all on the level, all can prate about their pasts, few so foolish as to speculate as to their future success. Out of gaols, out of spike; out of works, out of respects, but all accepting this long promenade’s hospitality in preference to that of the one big union – the workhouse.’

Returning to Lancashire, Caliban, teams up with like-minded friends and turns to organising:

‘We lounge and walk, often look for work we now know intuitively is non-existent. We get somehow or other drawn to what is known as ‘working for a cause’. The cause of the unemployed, the cause of ourselves, the neglected and the despised, the unwashed, exploited by all political parties – yes, all I say, bar no one. They all take advantage of our misery.’

Caliban never gets to encounter any member of ruling class up-close, but he knows the mediating social strata (petit-bourgeois), those bastard descendents of Ariel who weave the spells of ideology and subservience to authority.

‘Civil certainly, but what’s it all mean? Understrapper servility, holy-Michael piety, meekness, watch your step, every step, a life sentence to orthodoxy. Stupid pawns, robots, unimportant pigmies, bowing, scraping, never getting within a thousand miles of the oligarchy you serve.’

Caliban finds escape In the Rochdale Public Library:

‘Great pages of philosophy, science, history, and antiquity, written by men of all times, could be got from the libraries and by this method, at least, minds could be in communion with those whose environments were opposite. It is from these I got a rough cynical bite into the trousers seat of banality. I had suffered much from my lack of erudition, had often been made the butt of the petty supercilious wits. I was unabashed, undaunted and condemned everyone.’

Caliban’s efforts to organise unemployed workers are stymied by politicians (opportunist Labourites, the centrists of the Independent Labour Party - ‘Inflated Little Pawns’ he calls them - fanatical and disruptive ‘Third Period’ Stalinists and undercover police.

‘The police showed plenty of tact, but the hungry groups of famished men acted like the beasts that poverty makes them. Here and there, there were small riots, disturbances were common. Even our group of half-inchers, more like fogged idealists, got in a scrape. Of course we were guilty: vile language was used, windows were broken, stones were thrown, assaults were committed. A mob was unleashed: it was angry, it was hungry, it had been underfed. Arrests were made. The evidence and the breaches of the law justified them. BUT the enforcement of the law does not remove the cause, it merely deals with effects.’

And so Caliban is remanded in Strangeways prison. There is a lot described in Caliban Shrieks which has fortunately passed into history, such as the work house and the means-test for the unemployed. One institution that is still with us, however, is the prison system (in 1934 the UK prison population was about 15,000; In 2024 it is over 100,000. What else is new?). Hilton’s account of his imprisonment is, as Orwell put it, ‘delivered with an extraordinary absence of malice’.

Jack Chadwick explains in his introduction that ‘Upon release he was bound over, barred from speaking for his cause for three years. Pen and pad became the only outlet for the voice he’d learned to wield just as well as any rosette-wearing Prospero.’

Shakespeare’s Caliban curses his exile by Prospero (‘In this hard rock, whiles you do keep from me The rest o’th’island.’) ‘You taught me language, and my profit on’t is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you. For learning me your language!’ The ‘hard rock’ in Hilton’s tale is the class structure he can’t escape from.

As for the language of the 20th century Caliban, as Jack Chadwick puts, ‘Really, our Caliban had taught himself the language of the masters, at a time when the Prosperos of the industrial world had run out of profitable uses for their servants.’

Chadwick, a 28-year-old bartender and aspiring writer, discovered Caliban Shrieks while visiting Salford’s Working Class Movement Library. Chadwick tracked down Hilton’s lost heirs and secured the rights, on condition he’d get the writings republished. Chadwick got a deal with Penguin, which has just published it. It has been hailed by the New Yorker as a ;lost literary masterpiece;, whilst the Guardian, striking a typically snotty pose, judges that whatever its merits, it was ‘the eccentric form and chaotic style that doomed it.’
Chadwick’s assessment is more tantalising:

“Caliban Shrieks has this unique quality that I hadn’t come across before and I found it so compelling,” Chadwick told the Independent. “It’s so raw, it feels like it’s coming to you from across the pub table.”

https://thebarbarismofpureculture.co....

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[Andrew H · Rating 2 out of 5]

This sounded promising: a lost working class novel, an author supported by Orwell, and a surprise discovery. Numerous key reviews backed this up. I expected a novel that was insightful and different.
The result was far from the truth. The new edition carries a strange Introduction by Andrew McMillan, in which he seems to struggle for things to say. I gave up on this when I ended up in Tesco. Then there followed a second introduction by Jack Crawford who rediscovered the novel. By the end of that I feared that this was going to be a question of being warmed up for a main act that was not that good. Hilton's novel is loosely structured: a random collection of observations on working class life which never amount to much. Why did this novel disappear into the archives? Sadly, because it isn't that well written. Not at all the protest novel that the title suggests: a member of the slave class rising up against an imperial master (Prospero). Trinculo's Cry would be a better title.

[Amos · Rating 4 out of 5]

This will need a re-read. It's incredible that Hilton taught himself to read and write and then created such a unique and addictive literary style. This book deserves more attention for its class commentary and it's depictions of working-class existence. However, the references to eugenics are beyond "of its time" and stopped me fully losing myself in Hilton's writing but I suppose this adds to his pictures of what the working class engaged with during the 30s.

[rachy · Rating 2 out of 5]

A wilfully and necessarily exhausting book, the resdiscovered ‘Caliban Shrieks’ follows one ordinary man’s diatribe against the foibles of working class society in the early twentieth century. While not strictly poor in style and substance, this is definitely another case of one of these “rediscovered classics” being not quite as advertised. And while not completely without merit, I can see why a book like this didn’t quite stand the test of time.

I would say for me this was almost the framework of a novel, with points laid out rather than paired against a set of characters or a sense of plot, making the title of “autofiction” here a little tenuous. It’s not that no elements of the narrative are fictionalised I’m sure (as in, made up), but they certainly aren’t “fictionalised” (as in, made into something like a story or narrative). For me personally, as someone that doesn’t tend to non-fiction, if these observations were set against something, even just our lone narrator as more than just a concept, they would be all the more receivable and effective and entertaining. As they are, the novel was too impossible for me to remain interested in and by a little over half way through, I couldn’t find it in myself to care enough to continue.

There are other factors that tired me too. There is a vague structure of chronology, but other than that the subjects feel slightly random and don’t follow in an interesting way. The book by its style also contains an over abundance of small detail, and while the inclusion is entirely understandable (and even important), alas, a la ‘American Psycho’, it doesn’t always make them any more interesting or enjoyable to consume. Equally, so many things were touched on and made light of, but never explored in any deeper, more interesting way.

While ‘Caliban Shrieks’ also gives us a good impression of the kind of person our narrator is, it lacks entirely of the personal. Too few an emotion or characteristic were present for me, leaving the narrator a sketch or a model of a character, rather than a genuine one that I could understand and relate to. Considering there was equally no larger story either, there was too little for me to get my teeth into. I’m sure readers of non-fiction and memoir would maybe enjoy this offering much more than me, as someone who always comes looking for fiction specifically. This is maybe just another one that should never have really been marketed to a person like me, but hey, they have my money now, which I suppose was the intention. Publishers 1, Rachel 0.

[brigitte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but not fun/enjoyable/easy to read hence lowish rating. But also maybe that’s the point of the book….. it is a shriek

Wanna read road to Wigan pier now for comparison / dialogue (Orwell relied on Hilton’s actual working class identity and connections to write it)

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many readers will find that this book is not what they were expecting. Caliban Shrieks was republished in March 2024 by Vintage (e.g Penguin Random House), and was hyped in online articles and bookstores as ‘a rediscovered classic’, after being out of print since it was first published in 1935. The marketing strategy was not particularly subtle - I bought my copy when I walked into a Waterstones to see two tablefuls of the book next to a life-sized cardboard cutout of the skeleton on the front cover. The cover image itself (which is re-used from the 1930s original publication), featuring a blue skeleton with the subtitle ‘me’ pleading on its knees with what looks like a red pile of faeces is enough to make anybody stop and read the blurb. These factors came together to create a hype around its republication - not a booktok level of hype, but enough to make me buy the novel despite no previous knowledge of it, or its author.

The problem is that while the novel has some great poetic language and observations, it does not really feel like a novel as such, and I think it is unlikely to fulfil most reader’s expectation of a ‘rediscovered classic’. Let me explain more fully what I mean by this.

The first couple of chapters of the book are diegetic, as the narrator details his experience of growing up and fighting in WW1. This is in line with countless other novels (particularly bildungsroman or ‘Coming of Age’ literature), where the exposition sets up the background for the events of the story, with the expectation that the narrator will eventually reach the time and place that is the main focus of the plot. So I, the reader, waited patiently, expecting that Caliban Shrieks would follow this narrative convention. However, the novel never switches into the mimetic mode, the actual storytelling portion of the book. The whole of the book is merely the narrator describing things, often institutions, without any story to bind his musings together. The biggest disjoint is between the first and second half of the book. In the first half, the narrator has some relation to what he discusses (e.g he tells us he goes to war, and then muses on the politics of WW1); by the second half, the narrator philosophises about trade unions and the Labour Party without explaining in any detail his relationship with these two organisations. Because of this, there is little sense of time or place by the second half of the book, and towards the final chapters none at all.

The novel has almost no characters; there is simply the narrator, and his views about the working man as a group. Although the narrator at some points briefly mentions people he is related to, they are never named or characterised. They are just passing landmarks on the narrator’s road to his theses.

As a result, Caliban Shrieks is hard to give a rating to; it is a novel with no plot, a speech whose narrator constantly criticises officials for making speeches, a philosophical dialogue that does not support itself with examples and a report that offers no solution to the problems it exposes.

Having this unusual structure alone does not mean the book does not have merit; other modernist novels have similar rambling, stream of consciousness styles. Camus The Fall comes to mind as a similarly disorienting book to read. However, unlike The Fall, Caliban Shrieks reads like non-fiction. In fact, while the blurb states that the book is an ‘autobiographical novel’, perhaps a strategy to market the book to a wider audience, a quick google search suggests that it has sometimes been considered non-fiction, making it disappointing for readers who expect a story rather than a speech. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist is far better at dealing with a similar subject matter embedded within an engaging and, at times, moving story.

I still think the book is interesting, and an important addition to history, but for me it is more like political commentary written in a lyrical style rather than a novel. It is an unflinching description of how the treatment of the working class in the early 20th century was akin to a form of wage slavery, but has a distinct lack of typical novelistic features like characters, setting, climax and resolution. I would recommend the novel for anyone interested in (or studying) unusual narrative techniques, underrepresented histories, and the development of the British political parties, but not for someone looking for a story they can become emotionally engaged with.

[Katla María · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

[Charlie Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5 Stars.

The story around this book elevates its own mythos, as well as the story's poignantly resigned and weary attitude. Rebuked and passed over for its working-class essence and for Jack Hilton's own class background, the rediscovery and revival of it by Jack Chadwick drives this. The introduction made me tear up, with Hilton's close friends not having known of his authorial life before they knew him.

The book itself is lyrical, bitter, blase and confrontational. This makes it sound aggressive, but it is closer to a tired combination of Hesse and Dostoyevsky's 'Notes From the Underground'. Ultimately, like with so much of the British consciousness, it is resigned to its lot. Hilton, cynically affirms the passive victimhood of early 20th Century working life; "Man is the creature of conditions - enviroment; if the brute is overworked he generally cannot think."

He constantly draws out the prevailing unfairness(?), but bitterly remains wholly within this system. He scrapes and claws at it, abiding that ultimately reality is stronger than ideology - "The law of the loaf is the law of life - without it one starves, with it one lingers. The common dominant in all species of life is the struggle for survival." (Bold my own). This is the crux - that survival is all you can do, that the systems of the 'powers that be' cannot be changed. As he passes from childhood, war, homelessness, prison, employment, unemployment, Hilton experiences the edges of these systems.

The only way to 'win', is to stay alive. His bitterness drives this desire, he has nothing left. It is a bittersweet dirge, a eulogy of a future preordained, which was materialised for Hilton in the denial of his works, and his life continuing in the 'working-class lot'.

[Ian Russell · Rating 3 out of 5]

In various places, this is described as a novel and an autobiographical novel, but I would approach it as a collection of essays; ranting critiques on the woes of early British 20th century society, culture and politics: employment, welfare, warfare, trades unions, prisons, christianity, charity etc al.

It is also described as a lost novel and I’m hardly surprised (though George Orwell put in a good word for it in its day). It’s not an easy read overall. There are parts which I found slightly incomprehensible in its style and too overdone. Other parts were amusing though I’m doubting this was the intention, whilst others - on prison life and the misjudged nostalgia of old men, in particular - I found more absorbing.

By chance, it’s almost the antithesis of the previous “novel” I finished - A Possible Life - something that might have been improved by a pinch of this one’s energy. A curious read, probably still pertinent to some of today’s woes but hard to mark; I guess I’ll go for three stars.

[Rick Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be on the national curriculum. An unrelenting account of working class life in the early 20th century. I'm ashamed not to have read it sooner. Credit to all involved in bringing it back.

[Nicholas Perez]

Special thanks to Jack Chadwick, bartender, writer, and go-go dancer, for rediscovering this novel for the rest of of the world..

[holly ♬⋆˚࿔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“this is civilisation, the compass and ruled lines of a draughts-man, making exact uniformity, each segment of the orange alike, each filled with silent solitary souls. damn the psychic vice of such a designing brain. little need now for flogging, dungeons and foulness. you can do it with clean air and light. just make everything the same - so silent - so solitary - so inhumanly civilised.”

[Dr. Jeffrey H. Schnitzer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Caliban Shrieks Is not a novel. There is no story, and aside from the author, there are really no characters. What this short book is is an extended rant, ostensibly by a working class male In 1930s Britain. At first, there are bits of a basic story that might lead the reader to expect a narrative, but the ranting just goes on and on and on; though I suppose that is the inherent nature of a rant. There is no particular structure or conclusion; the book just stops. Extended rants on the whole are not terribly interesting , but this one is a bit better than most. It is bearable to read, though towards towards the end of its final few pages , I yearned for it to end, for the author to put the rant out of its misery.
In general, Mr. Hilton expresses the unemployed workers' woes. He is not terribly radical because he doesn't believe in much of anything.
For a while, this book is amusing to read, but as it fails to go anywhere, it becomes a rather nicely written bore. The Great Depression caused horrible suffering and death. Mr. Hilton's mildly cynical voice manages to avoid facing any of it. It's almost as if Bertie Wooster had fallen upon hard times, but didn't have Jeeves to ground him.

[Will Thornton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the first half, but the rest was just too dense for my liking. It's incredibly written all the way through, with one of the most vehemently bitter narrators I've ever had the joy of reading, but I just lost interest when it became a heavy political rant for the last 80 pages. Still great, just not my thing

[Mr John Messer · Rating 1 out of 5]

Raving Polemic

There is great pace and passion about the writing but much more that is tedious in its constant repetition. The descriptions of the trenches, the life of a tramp and the hideous prison system are illuminating. The latter part of the book seems pure polemic.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly prescient and insightful on every topic except women

[Geoff Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Apologies. I meant to write an opinion of Caliban Shrieks. I still hope to write an opinion of Caliban Shrieks. Instead, I have written something very different: an aside, a descent into a very personal rabbit hole. This:

I was surprised to find reviews in the last year or so of a rediscovered author from the 1930s, a contemporary of George Orwell, with – to me – a very familiar name, a name I came to cherish. In my classrooms, for over forty years, I used a fictional character with the same name as the real life author of this book, Caliban Shrieks: Jack Hilton.

My fictional Jack Hilton was a boldly-drawn coloured-in character on card, whose appearance and function I completely nicked from brilliant International House London teacher trainer Bernard Fox. Like Bernard, I used the character of Jack Hilton to help create contexts for presenting new language with English language learners.

Unlike Jack Hilton, the author, who lived a relatively modest working class life, my fictional Jack Hilton lived at the two financial extremes of existence: rich and poor. (I can’t remember if Jack Hilton was christened by Bernard or me, but because of the luxury Hilton Hotels chain, it is – or was – a name that epitomises wealth and privilege.)

Jack Hilton’s poor alter ego was a down-at-heels copy of his rich self: the slick pin-stripe suit begrimed and holed and patched, the top hat torn and battered, the monocle gone, the fat cigar switched for a skinny roll-up, the clean shaven twinkly-eyed well-fed face descended into unkempt bleary-eyed beardedness. (“When Jack Hilton was rich, he used to smoke cigars, but now he smokes cigarettes.” Used to do for Past Habits)

In a kind of spin off mode, this rough alter ego, in a modest cloth cap, sometimes doubled as a separate individual, a handy-man Jack Hilton employed under the name of “Arthur”. (“The lawn needs mowing.” Need(s) verb+ing)

Other characters – alas, pretty much social stereotypes of one kind or another – would all also make appearances, depending on the need for language contextualisation, such as Arthur’s two small children, a son with a devil-may-care grin, a daughter with an innocent smile, and his wife, her face drawn into a frown, sadly often employed as a nag (“You’ve been drinking again, haven’t you?!” Present perfect continuous) (“Nancy loves doing homework, but her brother Peter hates doing homework.” Like/love/hate/etc + verbing)

A very wealthy aristocratic older woman and a young plainly-dressed woman with a bucket and mop. (“Jane has to clean the floors every day – not the Duchess!.” Have/has to do for obligation) A long-haired hippy, a police officer. (“Excuse me. Can you tell me the way to the post office?” Directions) An unhappy face with an accompanying solicitous friend. (“I wish I hadn’t drunk so much last night!” Past regrets) An upset looking Shaggy from Scooby Doo, a door labelled “Job interviews”. (“He should have worn a suit.” Past criticisms)

At times, wealthy Jack Hilton was accompanied by an elegantly-dressed young woman, his daughter – you guessed it – “Paris Hilton”, a daughter whose every wish her loving father would attempt to satisfy. Paris was a privileged young woman with her own spin-off adventures, like a spontaneous shopping trip to New York, or a sudden wish to do up – or rather have done up – a dilapidated cottage she had acquired – using the bank of Dad, I always assumed – perhaps uncharitably. (“When Paris returned from her trip, Jack had had the house redecorated.” Causative past / To have something done)

In the old days, Jack Hilton and his fellow characters would be physically attached to the whiteboard at the front of the class, using Blu Tack or some other reusable sticky putty. As digital technology developed, he increasingly appeared in pre-prepared storyboards as part of a projected slide show.

Remarkably, throughout my teaching career of over four decades, I continued to use the character of Jack Hilton and others to give context to and liven up selected language presentations, and thousands of students who passed through my classrooms over the decades came to know Jack Hilton, and some would even recall particular language by association with the picture situation.

There are clearly many problems with the stereotyping of categories of people and individuals, and I realised this quite early on, though out of convenience, I continued to use a number of the characters. Over time, however, I did retire or modify some of the more shamefully obnoxious (sexist) stereotypes. On the other hand, my cast of characters was not at all diverse. The key differentiators were age, gender, occupation and socio-economic class. Now, as a belated revolutionary socialist / communist, it is interesting to look back at the mostly dated socio-economic class based stereotypes and note the very similar stereotypes in the pages of some (especially older) Marxist publications.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Whereas ‘Love on the Dole’ often situates us in one room, in one house, with one family, the novel you’re about to read runs shouting down the street, trying to wake everybody up.’

Caliban Shreiks was a novel lost in time. Published in 1935 it disappeared completely having gone out of print until it was rediscovered in the Salford's Working Class Movement Library in 2022. At the time of its initial release it was consider experimental. It’s semi autobiographical and uses internal monologues. Unlike other novels that would use characters debating subjects to get the point across Hilton talks directly to the reader. It’s also a highly critical depiction of working-class people centering on his home county of Lancashire.

The first half of the book is made up of short chapters. The prose bordering on poetical. This method helps to covey a lurid picture of growing up in the first decade of the 20th century. ‘From about five I began to have contact with my species, and the thing I remember most was the cruelty of it.’ And onto schooldays. ‘Now we will leave play and get down to school, the days of the strap, stick and uniformity.’ From there the protagonist goes on to become a soldier and is sent to France during the First World War, ‘folk were looking upon it as a picnic (how typically British).’ He skims over the atrocities of that conflict and concentrates instead on the effects it had on British Society. From there he spends time as a tramp, drifting as far afield as London before returning to Lancashire.

The later half of the book consists of longer chapters covering subjects such as marriage ‘It was imprisonment, and personality-destroying. It was poverty-producing and the creator of servitude,’ and unemployment. Here he touches on the much forgotten support for eugenics in the early 20th century, ‘I had like many of my class been accidentally born into the world by the chance of ignorance, and the only decent thing I could do was to see that I played no part in multiplying the vast hordes of flotsam and jetsam who annoyed, upset and tended to impoverish the super select race of oligarchic proportions.’ His determination to have a vasectomy though is thwarted, turned down for having a “dirty mind”.

Its varied styles give the book a sense of urgency and energy. And despite its somewhat grim subject matter Hilton also manages to inject a certain amount of humour too. (To laugh in the face of adversity is probably a British trait and certainly a Lancastrian one) Its style and use of language may be off putting to some but it shouldn’t be. Although you may need to dip into a thesaurus and even Wikipedia at times it’s not a difficult read and has an easy flow about it. It’s also a relative short book.

Why this book was allowed to drift into obscurity is difficult to explain. It certainly wasn’t the subject matter, just take a look at ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist’ which remained in print or the later works of writers such as Allan Sillitoe. Maybe the eccentric style was a little too chaotic, who knows, but it’s certainly a good thing to have it back. It’s a lovely curio, a slice of social history. It may not reach the heights of Robert Tressell’s book but it certainly deserves to sit along side such books on anyone’s bookshelf.

Also concerning the language used It is worth noting too that some of it may be offensive or inappropriate however its use here reflects the times it refers to and when it was written and should be read in context. I am not one of those who advocates censorship in cases like these as long as the reader is made aware before hand, and in this case there is a note at the beginning. The language or opinions shown or all part of the historical significance of the book.

[Stace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly congratulations to Jack Chadwick who found a copy of the original book in a Salford library following which a search was made for the current copyright owners to enable this 2024 edition to be published. This consists of 162 pages of the original text, Jack Hilton’s original preface following introductions by Andrew McMillan and Jack Chadwick. The hardback has a plain red cover with a dust sheet bearing Hilton’s sketch of a skeletal character on his knees.

Caliban Shrieks is semi-autobiographical, broadly following the first thirty years of Hilton’s life. The Caliban referred to in the title is taken from the enslaved character in Shakespeare’s The Tempest who Hilton compares himself to. This is one of several references in the book to the bard’s characters showing that despite his poor background Hilton had found the time and opportunities to read, presumably thanks to our public libraries.

Following the publishing of Caliban Shrieks, Hilton gained a scholarship at Ruskin College but prior to that he had little formal education beyond the local school which was part time from the age of eleven when he also worked in the cotton mill until he left school for good at fourteen. This lack of education is reflected in the writing style which includes many colloquial terms; some have definitions in brackets, many other do not. What is clear is that the book was written from the heart.

Along with the descriptive side of his life we have his opinions which very much follow the socialist views of the time. He is critical of most organisations including the government, the military, the judiciary and big business. In the final two chapters of Caliban Shrieks his comments become closer to rants when he expresses his strong opinions on the various socialist political parties and the trades unions. Only the Co-operative Societies get any affection. Despite his criticisms, Hilton has little to suggest in the way of change or improvements. Like Caliban, he is trapped and must accept his fate.

Is Caliban Shrieks a classic? As an academic exercise I am pleased that the book can be available to all and it has been written by someone who genuinely struggled with life in those difficult times. Hilton was close to George Orwell who had similar views on society and who reviewed Caliban Shrieks for The Adelphi literary journal. The contrast between the two authors being their backgrounds; Hilton from poverty, Orwell from privilege including an Eton scholarship.

You may find Caliban Shrieks depressing but if you read it I don’t think you will ever forget it. I have awarded four stars.

[Ruby Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you so much to Vintage Classics for sending me a copy of Caliban Shrieks for review. I love that works from the past are being rediscovered and published again in the modern day.

Caliban Shrieks is written as the autobiography of a working class man from Lancashire. So much of this is definitely relevant to the modern day. The constant struggle for work is never-ending, and there are also sections of the book about war and prison.

Some of the writing really resonated with me and I was surprised by how much was packed in. Overall, I found this to be a very interesting read, especially in terms of its politics.

Personally, I prefer books with a bit more structure and direction, although I’ll admit that this type of narrative isn’t my usual read. This also meant that it took me a while to get through. I know that this was written in a certain time, so I expected some outdated views, but some parts left a sour taste in my mouth, such as the attitude towards eugenics.

Unfortunately, I think this book suffered a bit for me because I read Down and Out in Paris and London by Orwell earlier this year. Both are autobiographical stories focusing on the working class experience and broader societal problems, but Orwell just did it better in my opinion. Still, if you enjoy reading about these themes, then you should give this one a go.

I’m still glad I read this, but I think if many people are expecting a classic novel, they may be disappointed. However, if you want a close focus on the working class experience, politics, and society, then this is a good look into a work by an author pushed out of literary circles similar to the experiences he wrote about.

[Laura Leaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can see why this book is not everyone's cuppa. The anger, the disdain, and the verbal vitriol for the bluebloods and the profiteers who exploit the "useless undesirables" is hard to take. This is why reading this skinny book as fast as possible may be the way to experience it. Also, the thing has no real plot. It's a working man's walk-about trying to find a job or purpose.

It reminds me of a less-poetic Ginsbergian Howl (although there are some excellent verbal gymnastics here). I'm not sure I could recommend it to anyone, but I did enjoy it myself.

When Hilton gets sucked into all the political meetings of his time (he says he'd go to any lecture that was happening), he also got an earful of the popular eugenics theories of his era. When he contemplated getting himself a vasectomy, so as not to reproduce his kind, I did laugh. I mean, it's sad, but honestly it reminded me of all the cult members of every country who will believe anything a gifted orator tells them, even ghastly stuff about themselves.

There is much social commentary in this thin volume, but what I most enjoyed was Hilton's use of the idioms or slang of 1930s England. I had to do a lot of Googling. The comparisons the author makes about where to go when homeless to get some "kip" were hilarious (loved "Starvation Army"), and the places ripe with "monstrous millions, charlatans, and pedantics."

[Leesa Harwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

My great grandfather was born in 1881 into a northern working class family. But, despite (and possibly because of) his lack of education and options he became a leading figure in the Workers Educational Association in Rochdale. He attended the free lectures of RH Tawney, and relentlessly encouraged his fellow workers to ‘open our minds to the great social and political problems affecting our national life’ (taken from one of his letters to the local newspaper urging workers to attend Tawney’s lectures before the upcoming 1910 general election). He had a hard life and wanted change.
So, when I found ‘Caliban Shrieks’, a rediscovered and re-published book by Jack Hilton, an enraged, eloquent member of the Rochdale workers’ rights movement, I picked it up.
In its pages I found echoes of my great grandfather’s letters to the editor one generation earlier. This is a great snapshot of a struggle, made even more compelling by the story of its rediscovery and author’s life.
If you get a chance, read it, out of respect for our working class ancestors who were born without access to an education or a voice - but who fought to find, claim and use both.

[Connor Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think the story of how this book was rediscovered was more interesting than the book itself. I think you can find an article in The Guardian about it somewhere.

Onto the actual book itself, I have mixed feelings about it. I think Jack Hilton really hits on something timeless with how veterans are mistreated and how capital exploits and crushes the workers under it. I think the last chapter is very timely, and his frustration with the Victorian generation reminds me a lot of my generation’s frustration with Boomers. A lot of socialist writings usually come from academics or places of privilege, so it’s nice to have a true working class perspective on the subject.

The biggest issue I have with the novel is its writing style. It’s written to be overly verbose and cerebral on top of the author’s voice sounding close to a Cockney accent. I don’t think it’s entirely the author’s fault given his background, but it makes it incredibly difficult to read as a result.

While I do think this book is timeless, I can see why it was forgotten for a century before being picked up again.

3/5⭐️

[David Lindbergson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating book which combines pseudo-autobiography with cynical polemic; unpolished and all the better for it. The name is fitting as Hilton portrays himself, the working man, as a Caliban shrieking out his frustration against the society that opresses him, with the 'parasites' of the capitalist class as Prospero.

Rough and sometimes incoherent (which isn't helped by its modernist tendency to flow-of-consciousness or its masses of slang and 1930's references), Caliban Shrieks is a difficult but entertaining and insightful read. Jack Hilton's life story continued post mortem with the recent rediscovery of his work and the book remains relevant today. It is filled with clever turns of phrase and passionate denunciation, a favourite of which is: "Indian infidelism is so anti-christian that they never exterminate fleas; they even put them into silver match boxes; so does the Labour Party."

Recommended!

[Fiona · Rating 3 out of 5]

Caliban Shrieks is the rediscovered 1935 political autobiography of a young English man outraged with the state of the nation. Hilton grew up in the Midlands, impoverished, later teaching himself to read and write. He decides to write this flamboyant outrage, which I found to be an informative insight into the mind of an "ordinary person" of his time. Of course there are many stark differences between acceptable opinions and themes (eugenics and racism included), however there were surprisingly many similarities to current age frustrations.

His writing style is almost comical at times, although I'm not sure intended to be, and he is intensely impassioned throughout. This aside, I was expecting more of a story or connection to characters, which never did develop. I would more describe this as a collection of essays and opinion peaces; I enjoyed reading these in their own way, but it grew tiresome by the end.

[Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for work book club - much much easier to read than expected - as long as you have a phone nearby to google old words/slang you don’t understand - I laughed quite a few times! (“The army worked on a slogan 'One Volunteer was worth ten pressed men': that was why we were placed twelve in a carriage and the door locked.”)

Some HARD (aka sick/cool/oof) lines too: “Opportunity can make goodness easy, but being in the dark alcoves of society's muck heaps makes entering prisons practically a certainty.”

And although it had some outdated words in it, the ideas hold up - not a bad view on women or minorities. Interesting thoughts on the Labour Party that stand up today…

Is able to look back at his young self with more wisdom (eg eugenics) and throw himself at the opinion of the future readers (at least those “general masses”) by admitting, who knows, he might be wrong?

[Martin]

“Why even the old men of today will realise that the statesmen of today are ‘blithering fatheads’, but it is only so because they can not do something. England’s day of greatness was at its peak in your youth, old sneezer, and now it’s declining. So statesmen now are ‘fatheads’ instead of great men, and youngsters with empty hands and nothing to clutch hold of are ‘indolent irresponsible pale pinkers’. Your vanity is part of the task you were set, it was a small part of the page of history. It was to make all that the world needed, and it kept you busy for some time. In the last hundred years you have done something worthwhile. You made the world rich and most people poor.”

[Gerald McFarland · Rating 3 out of 5]

A British working-class man wrote this book in the 1930s. It is regarded as an unjustly forgotten classic divided into two parts, the first an autobiography of Hilton's life as an unemployed man, a factory worker, a World War I infantryman, a hobo, a radical political speaker, and (briefly) a prisoner. His account of the daily life in a British jail is particularly compelling. The second half of the book is a long rant about the abuses suffered by men of his type in the British class system and a critique of the various organizations--unions, socialists, the Labor Party, and the like--that offer little help.

[Steven Gripp · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quick read on an old liberals beliefs in early 20th century England post WWI. Very prescient thoughts on economy, society, and even the institution of marriage. His “shrieks” are diatribes in an ever-changing world, and this book is more of a well-written journal of his thoughts on society rather than a story. Colloquialisms, allusions to literary greats, resounding in mostly Shakespearean allusions. He’s caught some good lines and it is worth checking out, especially since some of his century-aged thoughts reveal some truths about today.