James Hanley

Following an incident at sea, 50-year-old Captain Eugène Marius finds himself without employment or purpose in Marseille, paying fruitless daily visits to the port’s shipping offices. Consumed by guilt, spurned by his family, and faced with the futility of life away from the waters, Marius seeks solace in alcohol and the arms of a prostitute, but is unable to keep his mental and physical deterioration at bay. Remarkable in its gritty descriptions of Marseille and the psychological portrait of its protagonist, this is a poignant, sharply written examination of the maritime profession and life as an outcast.

The Closed Harbour

Acclaimed by luminaries such as William Faulkner and suppressed for more than 50 years by a prosecution for obscenity, James Hanley's 1930s classic charts the short and brutish life of a boy forced out of school and into the unforgiving world of work. Escape—in the form of stowing away on a ship—only deepens his exposure to the squalor and brutality that men are capable of, and when he arrives in Alexandria he learns there are some things that one can't run away from. Narrated in unflinching language that is both visceral and acute in its observational power, Boy is a shocking book that stays in the mind long after it is read. Unfairly neglected during his lifetime, only recently has this original, uncompromising novelist started to be reappraised as among the finest novelists writing in English in the 20th century.

A Kingdom

Our Time is Gone

Emily

A boy returns home from seminary to a family on the verge of collapse For almost seven years, Mrs. Fury has done nothing but think of Peter. Of her five children, he is the youngest, her darling boy whose future she planned out long ago. It was for Peter that she took one child out of college and married another off—for Peter that she sent a third to work at sea. She has sacrificed everything so that Peter could return to Ireland to study for the priesthood. He is to be the family’s salvation—but after seven years in seminary, Peter has failed. Mrs. Fury receives two telegrams: One telling her that Peter is coming home, the other bearing the news that her eldest son, Anthony, has fallen from his ship’s mast and is in a hospital in New York. With two slips of paper, Mrs. Fury’s hopes for the future are dashed. But this Irishwoman is strong as iron, and she will do whatever it takes to keep her family together—if only for Peter’s sake. The Furys is the first book of James Hanley’s acclaimed Furys Saga.

A Novel

The Furys

After an elderly farmer dies, following an accident on a remote Welsh smallholding, he leaves the kingdom over which he had ruled so fiercely to his two daughters, Lucy and Cadi. As they prepare for the funeral, the novel—the last written by the prolific James Hanley—relates the events and experiences that made each sister what she is now: Lucy, the runaway, who fled the farm secretly and without warning, never to see the old man again, and Cadi, who promptly sacrificed her job as a teacher in Manchester to take Lucy’s place in her father’s lonely world, thus initiating a pattern of guilt, self-submission, self-reliance, and occluded rage that would last until his death. A haunting, elegiac evocation of hill-farm life, A Kingdom focuses on the connotations of the word “rooted” from its first line, exploring what it means, for good and ill, to be tied to such a place.

Sailor's Song

Jessica Simpson

Building on a Firm Foundation

New Beginning

Selected Stories

Brigitte Mammitzsch

die Fury-Familiensaga

Fanny Fury

A powerful five-volume story of a working-class Irish Catholic family in England by a “novelist of distinction and originality” (E. M. Forster). In five novels, published between 1935 and 1958, James Hanley chronicled the struggles of an Irish Catholic family of seafarers in a fictional port city based on Liverpool, evoking the harsh realities and frustrated longings of Britain’s working class. The complete saga offers abundant proof that Hanley “is that rarity of rarities: a genuine original” (The New York Times Book Review). The Furys: As matriarch Fanny Fury struggles to hold her family together, youngest son Peter returns from seminary in disgrace—dashing her hopes for him—and her other son Desmond becomes involved in union organizing and a violent strike, in this “novel of turbulent power” (The New York Times). The Secret Journey: Fanny Fury continues to sink deeper in debt to moneylender Anna Ragner, who has a grip on all the families in this port city. But it is Peter’s involvement with the woman—complicated by his affair with his brother’s wife—that will lead to a violent end. Our Time Is Gone: As World War I tears Europe apart, the Fury family is disintegrating as well. With her husband gone back to sea and her beloved son Peter imprisoned, Fanny collapses. Slowly she is able to pull herself up by doing service as a cleaner for troopships. Winter Song: After Denny Fury’s ship was reported torpedoed, his wife staggered into St. Stephen’s Hospice, prepared to die. But when the shipwrecked old man appears, the reunited couple decides to finally return to Ireland, no matter how difficult the journey. An End and a Beginning: After serving fifteen years in prison, Peter Fury has been released. With his parents gone, there is nothing left for him in England. A pilgrimage to Ireland to see their final resting place will start him on his new life where he may finally find freedom.

The Furys, The Secret Journey, Our Time Is Gone, Winter Song, and An End and a Beginning

The Furys Saga

Winter Song

To escape a brutal life on the Liverpool docks, a boy runs away to sea Arthur Fearon is nearly thirteen, and in the eyes of the law, that makes him a man. He wants to study to become a chemist, but his family cannot afford for him to continue school. The thought of a life working the docks makes Fearon break down in front of his classmates, but there is no time to cry. This boy has to get to work. The docks are hellish, and Fearon’s first day is his last. He hops a steamer to Alexandria, looking for a better life on the sea, but everywhere he goes, he finds cruelty, vice, and the crushing weight of adulthood. He will not be a man for long. The subject of an infamous 1930s obscenity trial, this is the original, unexpurgated text of James Hanley’s landmark novel: an unflinching examination of child labor and a timeless tale of adulthood gained too soon.

When her husband comes back from the dead, Mrs. Fury plans a voyage Dennis Fury was too old to return to sea. Nearing seventy, his sailing days long behind him, he should have stayed home—but Britain was at war, and his family needed the money. When his ship was reported lost, his wife, the stalwart Mrs. Fury, staggered into St. Stephen’s Hospice, prepared to die. Twelve months later, as she clings to life, a shipwrecked old man appears near the docks, feeble, sick, and too drunk to know his own name. He has crossed half the planet to return home, but Dennis Fury will find that there is no home waiting for him. His return is enough to rouse Mrs. Fury from her deathbed. With her last burst of life, she wants to fulfill a dream she gave up on long ago and return with her husband to Ireland. The sea may stand in their way, but the Furys have never hesitated to cross an ocean. Winter Song is the fourth book of James Hanley’s acclaimed Furys Saga.

The fourth book in the five novel Furys sequence.

An elderly farmer dies, following an accident on a remote mid-Wales smallholding, leaving the kingdom he had ruled over so fiercely to his two daughters, Lucy and Cadi. As they prepare for the funeral, the novel charts the courses whereby each sister came to be what she now is; Lucy, the one that got away, fleeing the farm secretly and without warning, never to see the old man again, and Cadi, who promptly gave up her job as a teacher in Manchester to take Lucy's place in her father's lonely, narrow world, beginning a pattern of guilt, self-submission, self-reliance, and occluded rage that would last until his death. A haunting, elegiac evocation of hill-farm life, from its very first line A Kingdom is preoccupied with the connotations surrounding the word rooted and with what it means, for good and ill, to be tied to such a place.

James Hanley

About

Books

Join the club