John Wain (1925-94) was a productive man of letters whose output included 13 novels, eight volumes of poetry, three short story collections, a children’s book, six works of literary criticism, an autobiography, a memoir, a biography, four plays and at least 15 edited books. He made his name with his first novel,
Hurry on Down(1953), which seemed to inaugurate a key strand of post-WW2 British fiction characterized by rebellious, irreverent heroes. None of Wain’s subsequent works attracted so much attention, but his Samuel Johnson biography (1974) took the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and his tenth novel,
Young Shoulders(1982), won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction.
Wain can be placed within two successive, partly overlapping cultural formations in 1950s England: the Movement and the
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Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "John Wain". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 16 June 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4572, accessed 26 November 2024.]
