Hurry on Down 1961 by John Wain reprint orange back published by Penguin Books

Hurry on Down 1961 reprint orange back published by Penguin Books

Size: 18cm x 11cm x 1.5cm

Critics have agreed that a new kind of English novel appeared in the fifties, linking the names of John  Wain, Kingsley Amis, Iris Murdoch, and, later, John Braine. The Times Literary Supplement said in 1958:

John Wain had been the pioneer.  Hurry On Down came out the year before Lucky Jim and first established what then became known as "the Movement".' But the importance of Hurry On Down, first published in 1953, is not only chronological. The attention it attracted helped to create the mood in which the others could be written and read.

The book is more than a literary landmark : this comic, satiric, picaresque, vigorous novel, retains all the freshness of its original impact. It was also translated into Russian, appearing in the U.S.S.R. both serially and in book form.

"I would like to raise a glass to Mr Wain's first novel" - Sean O'Faolain in the Observer

"Hurry On Down, a young man's first novel, is a bustling kaleidoscope of a book, by an author fertile in expedient, keenly observant and occasionally probing the heart of darkness" - Michael Sadleir in the Sunday Times