John Wain

John Wain 1925-94, English novelist and critic, b. Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, grad. Oxford (B.A., 1946; M.A., 1950). Originally lumped with England's angry young men after the publication of Hurry on Down (1953), Wain later considerably broadened his scope. Although he remained concerned with the maintenance of human dignity in the face of a brutalizing class system, he served as professor of poetry at Oxford (1973-8) and wrote or edited more than seventy books. His works include the novels A Winter in the Hills (1970) and The Pardoner's Tale (1978); Letters to Five Artists (1969), poems; and critical studies of Arnold Bennett (1967) and Samuel Johnson (1975).

Bibliography: See his autobiography (1962); also studies by D. Gerard (1978) and D. Salwak (1981).

Wain, John Barrington (1925–94), poet, critic, and novelist. His first novel, Hurry On Down (1953), is an episodic and picaresque account of the career of Charles Lumley, who, on leaving university, rejects his lower-middle-class origins by working as a window-cleaner, crook, hospital orderly, chauffeur, and bouncer. It has been seen as a manifestation of the spirit of the ‘Angry Young Men’ of the 1950s. Other novels include The Contenders (1958), A Travelling Woman (1959), Strike The Father Dead (1962), The Young Visitors (1965), The Pardoner's Tale (1978), Young Shoulders (1982), and his Oxford trilogy: Where the Rivers Meet (1988), Comedies (1990), and Hungry Generations (1994). As a poet Wain was associated with the Movement and contributed to New Lines. He published several volumes of verse, collected in Poems 1949–79 (1981), a volume of autobiography, Sprightly Running (1962), and a biography of Dr Johnson (1974).