John Wain
Hurry On Down
John Wain's first and still best-known novel, this was the forerunner of "Lucky Jim" and "Room at the Top" - a class comedy of new expectations and new rebellions, it redefined fiction for the 1950s. It also forever linked the author in the public mind with the so-called phenomenon of the "Angry Young Men".
"Inventive, impulsive, cogitative and very funny...anarchic...dissent from current social moralities" The Spectator
Books and Writing Links
John Wain's
Life and Works (pdf file)
John Wain was made C.B.E.
for services to literature in 1984. He also served as Oxford Professor of
Poetry from 1973 to 1978.
He was in the unique position of being a
member of three literary movements : the Inklings, Tolkien and Lewis's
fantasy writers' circle; the so-called Angry Young Men; and the post war
poetic group The Movement (A A Alvarez, Donald Davie, Elizabeth Jennings and
Philip Larkin).