A kingdom

by James Hanley

Dj has been covered so is in very good condition, back wrap a little yellowed only. 201pp.

Genres: British Literature

201 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Born in Kirkdale, Liverpool, in 1897 (not Dublin, nor 1901 as he generally implied) to a working-class family, Hanley probably left school in 1911 and worked as a clerk, before going to sea in 1915 at the age of 17 (not 13 as he again implied). Thus life at sea was a formative influence and much of his early writing is about seamen.
Then, in April 1917, Hanley jumped ship in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, and shortly thereafter joined the Canadian Army in Fredericton, NB. Hanley fought in France in the summer of 1918, but was invalided out shortly thereafter. He then went to Toronto, Canada, for two months, in the winter of 1919, to be demobbed, before returning to Liverpool on 28 March 1919. He may have taken one final voyage before working as a railway porter in Bootle. In addition to working as a railway porter, he devoted himself "to a prodiguous range of autodidactic, high cultural activities – learning the piano ...attending ... concerts ... reading voraciously and, above all, writing." It is also probable that he later worked at a number of other jobs, while writing fiction in his spare time. However, it was not until 1929 that his novel Drift was accepted, and this was published in March, 1930.

Reviews

[Paul Secor · Rating 5 out of 5]

James Hanley wrote beautifully about isolated places, loneliness, and the distances between people. There are other aspects to life (thankfully), and other writers to illuminate those other aspects, but James Hanley was a master of his realm.

[David Grieve · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating account of the relationship between 2 sisters following the death of their father. Cadi lived with the father in a remote Welsh hill farm and her sister left that life behind to move to a town in Cheshire. She only returns following the news of his death. Very evocative and moving.

[Ivan Monckton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Firstly, prospective readers need to ignore both the blurb, which in a couple of sentences manages to be both misleading and factually incorrect, and the the cover of this Welsh Government supported ‘Library of Wales’ reprint, which bears little relationship to the contents. Other reviews, both on Goodreads and elsewhere, along with the Foreword by a Professor of English at Swansea University, are fulsome in their praise of the book, but, despite the plot being an interesting one - two sisters interaction with a difficult father who, seemingly out of the blue, moved to a remote Welsh smallholding, and their reunion after decades in preparation for the funeral - I found the conversation which the novel is full of, absolutely turgid. For example, everyone calls everyone else ‘dear’ continuously. It often reads more like a play than a novel. I shall give the test of Henley’s novels a miss…