An End and a Beginning / The Furys Saga (ePub)

James Hanley (1897-1985) was born in Liverpool, England, to an Irish Catholic family. He spent time in the merchant navy and served with the Canadian Infantry during World War I. From 1930 to 1981 Hanley published forty-eight books, including the novels Boy, The Furys, The Ocean, Another World, and Hollow Sea. He penned plays for radio, television, and theater and published a work of nonfiction, Grey Children, on the plight of coal miners. Hanley died in London but was buried in Wales, the setting for many of his works.

“James Hanley’s writing is as succinct as a telegram, nude, yet terrific.” —The New York Times
 
“[Hanley’s writing is] uncompromising, stark, too truthful to be comfortable.” —Anthony Burgess
 
“[Hanley was] not British, not American, not South African, not Ebury Street, not Chicago. Just language like a good clean cyclone.” —William Faulkner
 
“A modernist master.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“Few writers dig as deeply into people’s spirits as Mr. Hanley.” —The New Yorker
 
“A remarkable portrayal.” —Saturday Review
 
“A novel to be treasured.” —Time
 
“An impressive piece of writing . . . powerful and haunting . . . radiant!” —The Times (London)
 
“Mr. Hanley writes with great sensuous power . . . a distinguished novel.” —The New Republic
 
“[Hanley is] a novelist of distinction and originality.” —E. M. Forster
 
“[Hanley’s] language, intense and compassionate as his world is diseased and vicious, reveals an intense understanding of the cesspool of human nature and the capacity for good and bad, even at once.” —The List (Edinburgh)
 
“[Hanley was the creator of] some of the most serious and emotionally demanding novels in our language this century.” —The Sunday Correspondent
 
“Hanley is one of the most able and influential writers in the English language.” —The Boston Globe
 
“[Hanley] is that rarity of rarities: a genuine original.” —The New York Times Book Review
 
“[Hanley] is one of the most consistently praised and least-known novelists in the English-speaking world.” —Time