The Birmingham Group was a group of authors writing from the 1930s to the 1950s in and around Birmingham , England . Members included John Hampson , Walter Allen , Peter Chamberlain, Leslie Halward and Walter Brierley .
7-545: Walter Ernest Allen (23 February 1911 – 28 February 1995) was an English literary critic and novelist and one of the Birmingham Group of authors. He is best known for his classic study The English Novel: a Short Critical History (1951). Allen was born in Aston , Birmingham; he drew on his working-class roots for All in a Lifetime (1959), generally considered his best novel. He was educated at King Edward's Grammar School and
14-472: A while the group met weekly in a pub off Corporation Street . Although the Birmingham Group are often described as working class novelists, they in fact had the varied social backgrounds that characterised Birmingham's distinctive high level of social mobility . The Birmingham-based poet Louis MacNeice described how At this time, 1936, literary London was just beginning to recognise something called
21-623: The University of Birmingham , graduating in 1932—his friends at that period included Henry Reed and Louis MacNeice . He taught and took numerous temporary academic positions. In 1935, he was a Visiting Lecturer in English at the University of Iowa, Iowa City; from 1955 to 1956 he was visiting professor of English at Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; from 1963 to 1964 he was visiting professor of English, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, and in 1967 he
28-639: The 1930s that also included the poets W. H. Auden , Louis MacNeice and Henry Reed ; novelist Henry Green , the sculptor Gordon Herickx and the Birmingham Surrealists ; the Birmingham Group shared little stylistic unity, but had a common interest in the realistic portrayal of working class scenes. The group was christened by the American critic Edward J. O'Brien , who published several of their short stories in journals he edited and assumed they all knew each other. This became self-fulfilling, and for
35-574: The Birmingham School of novelists. Literary London, hungry for proletarian literature , assumed that the Birmingham novelists were proletarian. Birmingham denied this. It could be conceded however that they wrote about the People with a knowledge available to very few Londoners. This article about a literary movement is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to
42-651: Was at University of Kansas, Lawrence, and University of Washington, Seattle. He also worked in journalism, being at one time literary editor of the New Statesman ; and was a broadcaster. In 1967 he took a position as Professor of English Studies at the New University of Ulster . Allen published many novels early in his career mostly dealing with the life of the working class in England. As I Walked Down New Grub Street which accounts his meetings with prominent literary figures
49-670: Was published in 1982. After a significant break from fiction-writing for 27 years he published Get Out Early in 1986. He was known as an editor of George Gissing . He wrote some poetry, which appeared in John Lehmann 's publications in the 1940s. He left much writing in manuscript. He died in London . Papers of Walter Allen are held at the Cadbury Research Library (University of Birmingham). Birmingham Group (authors) Part of Birmingham's vibrant literary and artistic scene in
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