Book description
In Hanky Park, near Salford, Harry and Sally Hardcastle grow up in a
society preoccupied with grinding poverty, exploited by bookies and
pawnbrokers, bullied by petty officials and living in constant fear of
the dole queue and the Means Test. His love affair with a local girl
ends in a shotgun marriage, and, disowned by his family, Harry is
tempted by crime. Sally, meanwhile, falls in love with Larry Meath, a
self-educated Marxist. But Larry is a sick man and there are other more
powerful rivals for her affection. Walter Greenwood was born in 1903
at Salford in Lancashire. He was educated first at Langworthy Road
Council School, Salford, and then by himself. He began part-time work as
a milkroundsman's boy when he was twelve, then worked, again part-time,
with a pawnbroker, before leaving school at the age of thirteen. He
later worked as an office boy, a stable boy, a clerk, a packing case
maker, a sign-writer, a car-driver, a warehouseman, and a salesman,
never earning more than thirty-five shillings a week except while
working for a few months in an automobile factory. He was on the 'dole'
at least three times.
Love on the Dole
, his first novel, was accepted for publication in 1932, and when it
appeared in 1933 it was at once recognized as a classic. He published
ten more novels, a volume of short stories and his autobiography,
There Was a Time
. He also wrote plays, several of which have been filmed. Walter
Greenwood died in 1974.
