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Rosie Hogarth
A powerful and compassionate evocation of a working-class community in the throes of profound change. In the spring of 1949, Jack Agass belatedly returns from the war to the working-class street in Islington where he grew up. A proud, supportive community with a pub and a barber shop, and a common love of The Arsenal. But the street has changed. Jack eventually finds his footing but he's haunted by a yearning for his old childhood friend Rosie Hogarth. This edition of Rosie Hogarth is introduced by Andrew Whitehead, who works for the BBC World Service and is a former BBC political and Indian correspondent.
- GenresFiction
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
3 people are currently reading
30 people want to read
About the author
Alexander Baron
104 books36 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Alexander Baron (4 December 1917 – 6 December 1999) was a British author and screenwriter. He is best known for his highly acclaimed novel about D-Day entitled From the City from the Plough (1948) and his London novel The Lowlife (1963). His father was Barnet Bernstein, a Polish-Jewish immigrant to Britain who settled in the East End of London in 1908 and later worked as a furrier. Alexander Baron was born in Maidenhead and raised in the Hackney district of London. He attended Hackney Downs School. During the 1930s, with his schoolfriend Ted Willis, Baron was a leading activist and organiser of the Labour League of Youth (at that time aligned with the Communist Party), campaigning against the fascists in the streets of the East End. Baron became increasingly disillusioned with far left politics as he spoke to International Brigade fighters returning from the Spanish Civil War, and finally broke with the communists after the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939.
Baron served in the Pioneer Corps of the British Army during World War II, experiencing fierce fighting in the Italian campaign, Normandy and in Northern France and Belgium. As a sapper, he was among the first Allied troops to be landed in Sicily, Italy and on D-Day. He used his wartime experiences as the basis for his three best-selling war novels. After the war he became assistant editor of Tribune before publishing his first novel From the City from the Plough (1948). At this time, at the behest of his publisher Jonathan Cape, he also changed his name from Bernstein to Baron.
Baron's personal papers are held in the archives of the University of Reading. His wartime letters and unpublished memoirs were used by the historian Sean Longden for his book To the Victor the Spoils, a social history of the British Army between D Day and VE Day.[3] Baron has also been the subject of essays by Iain Sinclair and Ken Worpole.
As well as continuing to write novels, in the 1950s Baron wrote screenplays for Hollywood, and by the 1960s he had become a regular writer on BBC's Play for Today, for drama serials like Poldark and A Horseman Riding By, and BBC classic adaptions including Jane Eyre, Sense And Sensibility, and Oliver Twist.
Alexander Baron (4 December 1917 – 6 December 1999) was a British author and screenwriter. He is best known for his highly acclaimed novel about D-Day entitled From the City from the Plough (1948) and his London novel The Lowlife (1963). His father was Barnet Bernstein, a Polish-Jewish immigrant to Britain who settled in the East End of London in 1908 and later worked as a furrier. Alexander Baron was born in Maidenhead and raised in the Hackney district of London. He attended Hackney Downs School. During the 1930s, with his schoolfriend Ted Willis, Baron was a leading activist and organiser of the Labour League of Youth (at that time aligned with the Communist Party), campaigning against the fascists in the streets of the East End. Baron became increasingly disillusioned with far left politics as he spoke to International Brigade fighters returning from the Spanish Civil War, and finally broke with the communists after the Hitler–Stalin Pact of August 1939.
Baron served in the Pioneer Corps of the British Army during World War II, experiencing fierce fighting in the Italian campaign, Normandy and in Northern France and Belgium. As a sapper, he was among the first Allied troops to be landed in Sicily, Italy and on D-Day. He used his wartime experiences as the basis for his three best-selling war novels. After the war he became assistant editor of Tribune before publishing his first novel From the City from the Plough (1948). At this time, at the behest of his publisher Jonathan Cape, he also changed his name from Bernstein to Baron.
Baron's personal papers are held in the archives of the University of Reading. His wartime letters and unpublished memoirs were used by the historian Sean Longden for his book To the Victor the Spoils, a social history of the British Army between D Day and VE Day.[3] Baron has also been the subject of essays by Iain Sinclair and Ken Worpole.
As well as continuing to write novels, in the 1950s Baron wrote screenplays for Hollywood, and by the 1960s he had become a regular writer on BBC's Play for Today, for drama serials like Poldark and A Horseman Riding By, and BBC classic adaptions including Jane Eyre, Sense And Sensibility, and Oliver Twist.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 22, 2023
[Jonathan Cape] (1951). HB/DJ. 1/1. 342 Pages. Purchased from ‘Any Amount of Books’.
“The past had stood between him and the present. He had taken refuge in illusive memory, and its drugging comfort had made the present, with all its problems and tribulations, yet harder to face. It had given him false standards and a false vision of people.”
“He longed for the door to open, and at the same time hoped that it would not…”
An exploration of nostalgia as a mental disorder. Saudade.
“People in streets like this grow up like plants in cellars, away from the sunlight.”
“What we strive for is never what comes to pass.”
“The past had stood between him and the present. He had taken refuge in illusive memory, and its drugging comfort had made the present, with all its problems and tribulations, yet harder to face. It had given him false standards and a false vision of people.”
“He longed for the door to open, and at the same time hoped that it would not…”
An exploration of nostalgia as a mental disorder. Saudade.
“People in streets like this grow up like plants in cellars, away from the sunlight.”
“What we strive for is never what comes to pass.”
August 2, 2021
A limited book, Alexander Baron's Rosie Hogarth keeps the reader interested by the author's astute attention to character. Jack Agass, Joyce Wakerell and Rosie Hogarth, who appears about halfway through the novel, are all reasonably well-drawn, and this provides the appeal, for elsewise the book proves rather doggedly routine.
The novel follows Jack Agass as he returns to his working-class district of London in the years following World War Two, in which he has served, and his attempts to start a life for himself whilst overcoming unresolved insecurities and restlessness about his past. Baron – who was an admirer of Dickens – sometimes goes a bit overboard with the dialects for my liking, the cor-blimeys and the 'git aht of it's and so on, but the book provides an authentically working-class tableau without being a caricature, or condescending, or excessively sentimental. Dickensian flourishes – minor characters have names like Chick Woodruff, Mr. Pennyfarthing and Mr. Prawn – are thankfully few.
While it can sometimes be hard to tease out an overall purpose in such a cosy, character-driven book, Rosie Hogarth can be said to be about the good and bad aspects of pride. As one minor character says on page 272, this sort of working-class life is "hard when you're proud like me", and the book seems a loose meditation on the best way to navigate such a life. Without giving away the plot, by the end there are two points of view, represented by two characters: one who cites the political talking points about class and socialism and 'up the workers', and another who represents "that section of the working-class whose proudest possession is the word 'respectable'" (pg. 144) and who just wants a quiet life in which the family and the local community provide a foundation against whatever trials may come.
The book suffers from merely posing the dilemma – and quite loosely at that – without really biting into the meat of it. This reflects, no doubt, the author's angst at the time: he was a politically-active Communist who was beginning to turn away from the ideology without having found anything to replace it. But Baron's lack of resolution reflects the intractable problem of class-based poverty and leaves the reader adrift in how to respond to the novel. That said, the dilemma proves an interesting one to ponder, particularly when in the company of agreeable characters in a book that reads quicker than you would think.
The novel follows Jack Agass as he returns to his working-class district of London in the years following World War Two, in which he has served, and his attempts to start a life for himself whilst overcoming unresolved insecurities and restlessness about his past. Baron – who was an admirer of Dickens – sometimes goes a bit overboard with the dialects for my liking, the cor-blimeys and the 'git aht of it's and so on, but the book provides an authentically working-class tableau without being a caricature, or condescending, or excessively sentimental. Dickensian flourishes – minor characters have names like Chick Woodruff, Mr. Pennyfarthing and Mr. Prawn – are thankfully few.
While it can sometimes be hard to tease out an overall purpose in such a cosy, character-driven book, Rosie Hogarth can be said to be about the good and bad aspects of pride. As one minor character says on page 272, this sort of working-class life is "hard when you're proud like me", and the book seems a loose meditation on the best way to navigate such a life. Without giving away the plot, by the end there are two points of view, represented by two characters: one who cites the political talking points about class and socialism and 'up the workers', and another who represents "that section of the working-class whose proudest possession is the word 'respectable'" (pg. 144) and who just wants a quiet life in which the family and the local community provide a foundation against whatever trials may come.
The book suffers from merely posing the dilemma – and quite loosely at that – without really biting into the meat of it. This reflects, no doubt, the author's angst at the time: he was a politically-active Communist who was beginning to turn away from the ideology without having found anything to replace it. But Baron's lack of resolution reflects the intractable problem of class-based poverty and leaves the reader adrift in how to respond to the novel. That said, the dilemma proves an interesting one to ponder, particularly when in the company of agreeable characters in a book that reads quicker than you would think.
October 28, 2023
Wonderful read. 6th book read written by this author, and just as good as From the City, from the plough. Excellent characters, who resonate with the times. Well worth the read.
July 4, 2016
Alexander Baron was a London novelist of the mid-20th century, a time and place I love reading about. Despite the title, this is really the story of Jack Agass, a 30 year-old veteran of World War II who returns to the only place he ever called home: the fictional Lamb Street, in the North London borough of Islington. An orphan, with his adoptive family now scattered, he tries to rebuild his life. Rosie Hogarth is his childhood friend, and the girl who got away. There are many other, richly-drawn characters in this novel of a close-knit community adapting to a changing world. With rare warmth and empathy, Baron creates a tender, yet vibrant portrait of England's working class culture.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews