Cooper, William

Cooper, William, pseudonym of Harry Summerfield Hoff (1910–2002), novelist. He embarked on a career in government service after the war; the civil service features in much of his work. His most influential novel, Scenes from Provincial Life (1950), was hailed as seminal by Braine and other writers of the 1950s, who also chose provincial, anarchic, but ambitious, lower-middle-class heroes, and a low-key realist tone, in what some have seen as a reaction against Modernism. (See also Angry Young Men.) It was followed by Scenes from Married Life (1961) and Scenes from Metropolitan Life (1982). In these novels Joe Lunn narrates with comic irony his own story, from his schoolmaster days in a nameless provincial city when his mistress, Myrtle, is trying to marry him, through the immediate post-war years in London when he is trying to marry Myrtle, to his successful marriage to schoolmistress Elspeth; his affairs and career are contrasted with those of his colleague, confidant, and fellow novelist, Robert. A sequel, Scenes from Later Life, appeared in 1983 and another, Scenes from Early Life, in 1990.