Life
1901-1985 ; b. Sept., Dublin; brother of Gerald; brought up among Catholic
Irish in Liverpool; went to sea at thirteen and served for nine years;
joined Canadian Expeditionary Force’s Black Watch Battalion and saw
action; employed in several jobs before taking up journalism; ‘The
German Prisoner’, a story, published in ltd. edn (1930), concerning
the torture and killing of a German soldier by two British tommies; settled
in Wales; wrote to John Cowper Powys, then in New York, 1929-1934; The
Boy (1931), the story of a boy who goes to sea, contracts syphilis
in port, and is suffocated by the captain (composed in ten days); caused
him to be prosecuted for obscenity; his story ‘A Passion before Death’,
concerning a condemned man whose sexual desire for his wife is satisfied
by a compassionate officer, also seized and destroyed; Ebb and Flood
(1932); embarked on a history of a Liverpool-Irish family in The
Fureys (1935), followed by The Furys (1935), The Secret
Journey (1936), Our Time is Gone (1940), Winter Journey
(1950), and An End and a Beginning (1958), and other novels
in Dublin series; Broken Water (1937), autobiography; No Directions
(1943), set in London during the Blitz; Hollow Sea (London: Nicolson
& Watson 1950), one of his own favourites; dramatic pieces include
Say Nothing (1962) and and The Inner Journey (1965); John
Cowper Powys acted godfather to his son Liam. NCBE IF2 DIW KUN OCIL
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Works
Selected fiction, The Last Voyage (London: Jackson 1931),
73pp., front. port. by Alan Odle and foreword by Richard Aldington [ltd.
ed. 550 copies]; frontis. by Alan Odle]; also A Kingdom (London
1978); A Woman in the Sky (London; Deutsch 1973), 223pp.; Don
Quixote Drowned [q.d.]; Against the Stream (1982); No Directions
(1946); What Farrar Saw [q.d.]; Say Nothing [q.d.]; An
End and A Beginning (London: 1958; rep. André Deutsch 1990);
The Furys (London 1935) large octavo, and Do. [rep.] (Harmondsworth:
Penguin 1983); Hollow Sea (London: Nicolson & Watson 1950);
rpt. (iv), 356pp.; Sailor’s Song (London: Nicolson & Watson
1943), (ii), vi, 204pp.; A Walk in the Wilderness (London: Phoenix House [1950]), 192pp. [A walk in the wilderness; Afterwards; The road: Another world: It has never ended].
Miscellaneous, ‘The German Prisoner’, in London Magazine (Feb.-March 1996), pp.6-26 [infra]. Reprints, Boy [rep.], intro. by Anthony Burgess (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1992); Alan Ross, intro., The Last Voyage and Other Stories (London: Harvill 1997), 271pp.; The Ocean (Harvill 2000); Lengthy correspondence with John Cowper Powys ed. by Chris Gostick (2001).
Criticism
Sheri Pickett Midkiff, ‘James Hanley’s Tragic Vision: the Postwar
Novels’ (DPhil; Mississippi 1994).
Paul Binding, ‘Man against fate’, review of The
Last Voyage and Other Stories, 1997; TLS, 5 Dec. 1997).
Walter Allen, Tradition and Dream (1964).
Valentine Cunningham, Writers of the Thirties (1988).
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Notes
Stephen Brown, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. I] (Dublin: Maunsel
1919), cites num. novels dealing with Liverpool-Irish, e.g., Ebb and
Flow, Ships.
Desmond Clarke, Ireland in Fiction [Pt. 2] (Cork: Royal Carbery 1985), adds An End and a Beginning. Peter Furey emerges after fifteen years in prison ... and returns to Ireland. A novel of great authority, according to The Tablet.
Cathach Books (Cat. 12) lists A Kingdom (London 1978); A Woman in the Sky (London 1973); Don Quixote Drowned [n.d.]; Against the Stream (1982); No Directions (1946); What Farrar Saw [n.d.]; Say Nothing [n.d.]; An End and a Beginning [n.d.]; The Furys (London 1935), large octavo; An End and a Beginning [n.d.]; The Furys (London 1935), large octavo; Hollow Sea (London: Nicolson & Watson 1950); rpt. (iv), 356pp.; Sailor’s Song (London: Nicolson & Watson 1943), (ii), vi, 204pp.
‘The German Prisoner’, in London Magazine (Feb.-March 1996), pp.6-26; orig. publ. in ltd. ed. 1930; copies seized by police with Hanley’s [The] Boy (1935) [recte 1931]; the story concerns Peter O’Garra, b. Belfast, and living in Tara St., Dublin, before enlistment in the First World War; with another soldier he mutilates a young German soldier caught in the same shell-hole.
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)