Caliban Shrieks

Product Information

Croft, Andy (1990). Red Letter Days: British Fiction in the 1930s. Lawrence and Wishart. ISBN 0853157294. Hilton died modestly and unacclaimed, and 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 unknown. Before his death, Hilton used to come round to Mary and Brian’s for tea several times a week, eating with them and their two boys. None of the family had known that he’d ever been a writer, nor did they ever hear much about his tumultuous early life.

Born into a large working-class family, Hilton grew up in a slum before starting work in a cotton mill at the age of eleven. He fought in the First World War before a period of several years as a vagabond. Upon settling in Rochdale in the latter half of the 1920s, he took up odd jobs in the building trade. During the Great Depression he began to organise for the National Unemployed Workers' Movement. After a protest in 1932 for which he was imprisoned in Strangeways, Hilton was barred by a magistrate from involvement in the organisation of future protests or political actions with the NUWM. He turned to writing instead, and soon afterwards a tutor of his at the Workers Educational Association stumbled upon a notebook containing drafts by Hilton. The tutor posted the texts to the modernist literary editor John Middleton Murry who invited Hilton to contribute to his magazine, The Adelphi. Hilton's contributions evolved into his debut novel Caliban Shrieks, published in 1935. WH was born in 1898 the son of a coal hawker. Though a weaver by trade he turned his hand to countless other jobs including language teacher, able seaman, stuntman etc. WH was widely travelled and fought in WW1. He later became a communist councillor in Todmorden and In 1930 he attempted to establish a”League for the Liberation of Proletarian Arts” via The Daily Worker but this was rejected (ie this was before the CPGB adopted the Popular Front tactic). WF served a 9 month jail sentence in 1932 for his part in a demonstration of the unemployed in Todmorden. His first book was self-published and hawked door-to-door and its success led him into journalism eg covering the Spanish Civil War and Northern life etc..Half-time system, how many bow legs have you made? little puny legs shuffling along up hill at early morn, then bearing a doffing box plus a tired body. No wonder the comedians of the day made the Lancashire lad a skit; still it was a tragic one. What a price to pay for prestige; cotton the world and ruin the child! FOC was born in Cork in 1903 and was later active in the Irish Republican movement. He was imprisoned in Gormanstan. By the 30s and 40s he was part of the Irish literary revival and became director of the Abbey Theatre. He left Ireland in the 50s as a result of government censorship of his work. He settled in the USA and died in 1966.

RD was born in Clydach Vale the son of a grocer. He left Wales in the 20s to pursue a writing career in London. He travelled abroad and was later befriended by D.H. Lawrence. LH was born in Sally Oak, Birmingham in 1906, the son of a butcher and started work at the age of 15, working variously as designer, tool-maker, labourer and plaster. He also contributed to New Writing, Fact, Left Review and the London Mercury. JJ was a founder member of the CPGB who ended up supporting the Liberals after passing through Oswald Mosley’s New Party. Even so the Unity Theatre staged a dramatisation of Rhonnda Roundabout.

Create a new list

Cities of the Dreadful Future: The Legacy of Psychogeography, Urbanism and the Dérive in London and Paris January 9, 2023 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: A small band of diehard Hilton fans, mostly literary academics, tried many times over the decades to solve the mystery without success. JH was born in Handsworth in 1901. His parents were once rich. Hampson worked at a variety of jobs including munitions factory worker, chef, waiter and book thief. Hilton was proud to be a plasterer. Part of the magic of Caliban Shrieks is the novel’s interrogation of the status games compelling so many into decades of drudgery, in the mills, trenches, factories. He never wanted to rise above his class, “the lower working-class type,” into mortgaged respectability: "Whenever I’m with the intellectuals I always feel they do not belong to my world,” he wrote, continuing, “...with all their theories and mentalised life they have had very little experience of living…they’ve been too sheltered, and too looked up to." If the price for becoming a professional writer was his position within the working-class — the aspect of his life he believed enabled him to write with such critical directness about what he saw — then he would choose plastering, and proudly so.