The Railway Accident and Other Stories

by Edward Upward

This rare and vintage book is a perfect addition to any bibliophile's collection

Genres: Fiction

233 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Edward Falaise Upward was a British novelist and short story writer and, prior to his death, was believed to be the UK's oldest living author.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first came across Edward Upward’s writing in the late 70s. He was a contemporary and friend of Isherwood (in particular), Auden and Spender. Like many intellectuals of the thirties he was attracted by the rise of communism; Upward actually joined the communist party in the thirties. He left in 1948 (it wasn’t revolutionary enough!), but remained active in left wing politics; campaigning for CND, the anti-apartheid movement, against the Vietnam War and so on. His opposition to war was particularly vehement. Upward became and remained a Marxist. I was reminded of him on his death in 2009 at the age of 105. The excellent essay by Christopher Hitchens in “Arguably” also sparked my interest. I hadn’t realised how influential Upward was; Isherwood called him “the judge before whom all my work must stand trial”. Upward appears in some of Isherwood’s work as the character Allen Chalmers. At times Upward has also written some of his short stories as Allen Chalmers.
This collection contains one novella (Journey to the Border) and five short stories. The first story is “The Railway Accident”, which is a very early work and is firmly in the British surrealist tradition. Isherwood and Upward created an imaginary world called Mortmere and both wrote about it. This is Upward’s only published Mortmere story. It was written in the mid-20s and not published until 1949. Isherwood described Mortmere as:
“A sort of anarchist paradise in which all accepted moral and social values were turned upside down and inside out and every kind of extravagant behaviour was possible and usual. It was our private place of retreat from the rules and conventions of university life”.
This is the only piece of Mortmere work published. Upward destroyed the rest in the early 1950s, feeling such fantastical works did not belong in a post holocaust world. In it there is an odd abundance of fantastical incidents described by the fevered mind of the narrator. It is an oddity.
Journey to the Border is about a tutor working for a middle class family he despises. It concerns a search for meaning set in a day and involving a trip to the races. The tutor meets a variety of people, all representative tropes of a way of thinking, including a completely hideous fascist/racist/imperialist type. All the types lead the tutor to the conclusion that he needs to join the class struggle on the side of the workers. The other stories have a similar sort of message.
The writing style is steady, thorough and careful rather than exciting. Upward is trying to ally his Marxist beliefs with his concept of literature. It is an interesting collection, but it does feel like a rather dated period piece.

[Gergely · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edward Upward's writing has such a flow. I really enjoyed this collection of stories and would like to find out much more about his writing.

This collection is a very interesting look into the mood of an era, the life of Britain between the two World Wars. The changes in society, the struggles with internal and external conflicts. Since the writing is so subjective, the line between reality and one's internal world is blurred, just like the way real experiences are. This is expressed most in the longest story of the collection, the Journey to the Border.

I cannot say I understood all the message from a distance of almost a century, but surely I'll re-read this later.

[DGT · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a revealing collection of Edward Upward’s stories, including a short novel, “Journey to the Border” (1938). The title story (written 1928 and published under a pseudonym in 1949) is a remarkable exercise in surrealism and fantasy but also his farewell to both Modernism and the imaginary village of Mortmere, while the remaining texts in the collection demonstrate Upward’s unbending commitment to social realism, that being his interpretation of the effort to align literature with Marxism. There was no backsliding by Upward from his political position, first adopted in the 1930s and maintained through to his death, aged 105, in 2009, in spite of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, news of the 1930s’ Moscow Trials, and the often bloody contortions of Soviet communism through to 1989. His commitment did significantly change his writing, though, and, on the basis of this collection, for the worse. Whereas “The Railway Accident” memorably combines an apparently sober narrative tone with wild invention and apocalypse, the later stories and novel are routine social realism and quite predictable. I was left regretting that Upward, who was greatly admired by Christopher Isherwood and other contemporaries, did not find more imaginative ways to combine Marxism and Modernism; there are plenty of examples in literature and art. Besides which, I wish that he had written more stories about railways, however nominally “The Railway Accident” may qualify as a railway story.

[Julie Akeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was ok but hard to read, he had a socialist focus so I was a little lost in that. I had a hard time keeping track what was going on, I never read this author before so I had quite a challenge in understanding the writing.

[Emily Pinto · Rating 4 out of 5]

More than a piece of literary history, this is well worth taking a look at.