Wain started out teaching at the University of Reading, but in 1953 left to pursue writing full time. His first novel, Hurry on Down (1953; published in the United States as Born in Captivity) was a bestseller and launched Wain’s career as a novelist. The book ran into several hardcover printings and was often reprinted as a Penguin paperback; it became a defining book of what the media called the ‘Angry Young Men’ movement and paved the way for later British classics of the 1950s, including Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim (1954) and John Braine’s Room at the Top (1957). Wain would go on to publish over a dozen more novels and story collections, but though many of them were well received by critics, none of them matched the popular success of Hurry on Down.

In 1973, Wain was appointed the first Professor of Poetry at Oxford University, and the following year his biography of Samuel Johnson won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 1982 he won the prestigious Whitbread Award for his novel Young Shoulders, and his services to literature were recognized in 1984 when he was awarded a CBE. In the late 1980s, he began his ‘Oxford Trilogy’ with Where the Rivers Meet (1988), and the final volume, Hungry Generations, was published shortly after his death in 1994. Though his obituary in the Times suggested his most enduring contribution might lie in his literary criticism and biographical studies, Wain’s novels deserve rediscovery; several of the best, including Strike the Father Dead (1962), The Smaller Sky (1967), and A Winter in the Hills (1970) are being republished by Valancourt Books.

About the Cover

ABOUT THE COVER

Cover: The cover reproduces the original jacket art from the 1953 Secker & Warburg first edition.