The Patrick Hamilton Appreciation Society discussion

Miss M wrote: "I recently stumbled upon William Cooper."

A completely new name to me Miss M. Thanks for highlighting him. I agree that his "Scenes from..." books sound intriguing.

Miss M wrote: "Hope to give William Cooper's Scenes From... a re-read soon. "

Please report back. If you think they're worth a read then I will dive in too. My library doesn't have any, however I notice Amazon UK have copies of "Scenes from Provincial Life: Including Scenes from Married Life".



Miss M wrote: "Notable among these was The Struggles Of Albert Woods, concerning the travails of a eminent academic of lower middle class origins who marries well, but blows his chances of a knighthood. The novel was compared by John Betjeman in style and comic impact to the Grossmiths' The Diary of a Nobody. "

Sounds very promising, and yours for £2.81 via Amazon (second hand).

Thanks again Miss M. Here's the William Cooper thread in readiness.

From the Telegraph - 7 Sep 2002:

William Cooper, the novelist who died on Thursday aged 92, was best known for the series of novels that began with Scenes from Provincial Life (1950), the book which became the prototype for Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, John Wain's Hurry on Down, Malcolm Bradbury's Eating People is Wrong and other irreverent, iconoclastic novels of the 1950s, usually set in the provinces.
...
Scenes from Provincial Life is a wry comedy of manners set in 1939 and constructed as a running report from the coal-face of life by Joe Lunn, a talented but frustrated science teacher at a Midlands grammar school, who enlivens an unsatisfactory existence by sleeping as often as he can with his girlfriend Myrtle (she wants marriage; he refuses to be tied), becoming involved in skirmishes with authority and trying to establish himself as a writer.

With its crisp dialogue, shrewd observation and often hilarious set pieces, the book brilliantly captured the faintly louche but stultifying atmosphere of the period, while at the same time making everyday events seem moving and real. The book was hailed as seminal by John Braine, Malcolm Bradbury and other writers of the period, who also chose provincial, anarchic but ambitious lower middle class heroes and a low-key realist tone in what some have come to see as a reaction against Modernism. When the novel was republished in 1982, together with two sequels in the series, it was judged by one critic to be more accomplished than anything of the same genre which followed.

William Cooper was born Harry Summerfield Hoff at Crewe on August 4 1910, the only son of Nonconformist school teachers. As a young child he hardly saw his father, who was away for four years on the Western Front. When he returned home in 1918, he seemed to be in a permanent black mood, smoked heavily and received little sympathy from his wife. Later on Cooper concluded that his father was a nicer person than he had realised and his mother probably less so.

Cooper was educated at Crewe County Secondary School, where he confessed to having been something of a swot. An early instinctive faith in rationality led him to become a scientist and by a sheer effort of will and despite the best efforts of a hostile headmaster, he won a place at Christ's College, Cambridge, to read Natural Sciences.

At Cambridge he found himself overawed by the public schoolboys, who all looked "bigger and stronger" than he was; but he became life-long friends with C P Snow, his supervisor in physics.

After graduating, Cooper became a science master at Alderman Newton's school in Leicester, which Snow had attended as a boy. Later, after wartime service as a squadron leader in the RAF, he joined Snow at the Civil Service Commission, interviewing young scientists and technologists for jobs.

After Scenes from Provincial Life, Cooper wrote four more novels before publishing his next book in the series. Notable among these was The Struggles of Albert Woods, concerning the travails of a eminent academic of lower middle class origins who marries well, but blows his chances of a knighthood. The novel was compared by John Betjeman in style and comic impact to the Grossmiths' The Diary of a Nobody. Other books of this period include The Ever Interesting Topic (1953), Disquiet and Peace (1956), Young People (1958) and a biography of C P Snow (1959).

Here's his Wikipedia page. From the Wikipedia page here's a list of his work...

Novels

• Trina (as H.S. Hoff) London, Heinemann, 1934; as It Happened in PRK, New York, Coward McCann, 1934.
• Rhéa (as H.S. Hoff). London, Heinemann, 1937.
• Lisa (as H.S. Hoff). London, Heinemann, 1937.
• Three Marriages (as H.S. Hoff). London, Heinemann, 1946.
• Scenes from Provincial Life. London, Cape, 1950.
• The Struggles of Albert Woods. London, Cape, 1952; New York, Doubleday, 1953.
• The Ever-Interesting Topic. London, Cape, 1953.
• Disquiet and Peace. London, Macmillan, 1956; Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1957.
• Young People. London, Macmillan, 1958.
• Scenes from Married Life. London, Macmillan, 1961.
• Scenes from Life (includes Scenes from Provincial Life and Scenes from Married Life). New York, Scribner, 1961.
• Memoirs of a New Man. London, Macmillan, 1966.
• You Want the Right Frame of Reference. London, Macmillan, 1971.
• Love on the Coast. London, Macmillan, 1973.
• You're Not Alone: A Doctor's Diary. London, Macmillan, 1976.
• Scenes from Metropolitan Life. London, Macmillan, 1982.
• Scenes from Later Life. London, Macmillan, 1983.
• Scenes from Provincial Life, and Scenes from Metropolitan Life. NewYork, Dutton, 1983.
• Scenes from Married Life, and Scenes from Later Life. New York, Dutton, 1984.
• Immortality at Any Price. London, Sinclair Stevenson, 1991.
• Scenes from Death and Life (1999)
Uncollected Short Stories
• Ball of Paper, in Winter's Tales 1. London, Macmillan, and NewYork, St. Martin's Press, 1955.
• A Moral Choice, in Winter's Tales 4. London, Macmillan, andNew York, St. Martin's Press, 1958.

Plays

• High Life (produced London, 1951).
• Prince Genji (1950; produced Oxford, 1968). London, Evans, 1959.

Non-fiction

• C.P. Snow. London, Longman, 1959; revised edition, 1971.
• Shall We Ever Know? The Trial of the Hosein Brothers for the Murder of Mrs. McKay. London, Hutchinson, 1971; as Brothers, New York, Harper, 1972.

Memoirs

• From Early Life. London, Macmillan, 1990.

Thanks for the thread, Nigeyb, I'll report back when I have a chance. Probably be several weeks.

I think I actually own this one: Scenes from Provincial Life, and Scenes from Metropolitan Life. Bought from a used bookstore when I had never heard of William Cooper and often bought books I had zero familiarity with. I've still never heard of him, to be honest. This thread is the first time I've seen his name mentioned in donkey's years.

I spotted an old Penguin edition of Scenes from Provincial Life in an honesty bookshop, remembered the name (thanks to this thread), paid my 50p, and duly read it. I thought it was a bit of a lightweight comedy of manners at first - but it grew on me and I finished up liking it more than I expected. Not a London novel, obviously, and more concerned with writers and schoolteachers than barmaids and prostitutes, but that's fine. Review at www.goodreads.com/review/show/8343691...

Terrific review, Peter, and inspirational... needless to say, i've let it fall by the wayside. Thanks for an interesting reminder.

Thanks Peter. I enjoyed your review.

It has gained some period charm too - all bicycles, tea shops, and trams - and surely deserves to be rediscovered.

Who doesn't revel in a world containing bicycles, tea shops, and trams?