The Furys Chronicle

The Furys Chronicle is a sequence of five novels, published between 1935 and 1958, by James Hanley (1897-1985). The main setting is the fictional, northern, English town of Gelton, which is based on Liverpool, where Hanley was born, and involves an Irish Catholic family of seafarers, similar to Hanley's own. The action takes place between 1911 and 1927. The first novel in the series, The Furys, was Hanley's sixth novel.

History

Liverpool in 1907. The Furys takes place in 1911

Originally conceived as a trilogy,[1] this sequence of five novels by the Liverpool born writer of Irish descent, James Hanley, chronicles the lives of the Furys, an Irish immigrant family, in the fictional northern English town of Gelton "a fictional counterpart of Liverpool".[2] These novels were published over a period of more than twenty years (1935–58) and cover the period from 1911 until 1927.[3] The series is based on Hanley's own experiences of growing up a Catholic of Irish descent in a city divided by sectarian tensions. The father, Denny Fury, had been a stoker on ships, as had Hanley's father. Hanley was fourteen in 1911 so that would have been around the time he left school and started work as a clerk.[4]

No date is given, but the action takes place over three or four weeks a few years before World War I. The strike that takes place in the novel, with its accompanying scenes of violence, appears to be based on the 1911 Liverpool general transport strike, also known as the '"great transport workers' strike", involved dockers, railway workers and sailors, as well people from other trades. This took place in 1911, and paralysed Liverpool commerce for most of the summer. It also transformed trade unionism on Merseyside. For the first time, general trade unions were able to establish themselves on a permanent footing and become genuine mass organisations of the working class.

Clongowes Wood College, in County Kildare, Ireland, from which Peter Fury is expelled, is a secondary boarding school for boys. Founded by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1814, it is one of Ireland's oldest Catholic schools. It also appears prominently in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Strike action began on 14 June when the National Sailors' and Firemen's Union announced a nationwide merchant seamen's strike. Solidarity action in support of the seamen led to other sections of workers coming out on strike. A strike committee - chaired by syndicalist Tom Mann - was formed to represent all the workers in dispute. Many meetings were held on St. George's Plateau, next to St. George’s Hall on Lime Street, including the rally on 13 August where police baton charged a crowd of 85,000 people, who had gathered to hear Tom Mann speak.[5] This became known as "Bloody Sunday". In the police charges and subsequent unrest that carried on through the following night, over 350 people were injured. 3,500 British troops were stationed in the city by this time. Two days later, soldiers of the 18th Hussars opened fire on a crowd on Vauxhall Road, injuring fifteen, two fatally: John Sutcliffe, a 19-year-old Catholic carter, was shot twice in the head, and Michael Prendergast, a 30-year-old Catholic docker, was shot twice in the chest. An inquest into their deaths later brought in a verdict of 'justifiable homicide'. .[6] Home Secretary Winston Churchill sent in troops and positioned the cruiser HMS Antrim in the Mersey.[7][8]

The editors of the Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics edition of The Furys, and some critics, confuse the strike that occurs in the novel with the 1926 General Strike.[9] The third novel in the series, Our Time is Gone, is set during World War I.

Another important event in this novel is the return of Peter Fury, who has been expelled from Clongowes College, a Jesuit school in Ireland, where he had been studying, in order to eventually become a Catholic priest. This was his mother Fanny Furys' dream and Peter's schooling represents a significant sacrifice for the Fury family, who live in the slums of Gelton (Liverpool). The famous Irish novelist James Joyce attended Clongowes College and it makes an appearance in his semi-autobiographical novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Like Joyce's Stephen Daedalus, both Peter Fury, and Joe Rourke in Hanley's first novel Drift, rebel against their strict Roman Catholic upbringing. After he returns Peter has an affair with his brother Desmond's wife. To support himself Peter has to become a sailor.

Takes place over about a month in 1912.[10] when Peter Fury has just returned from his first voyage. Mrs Fury is a changed woman because of the mountain of debt that she has accumulated, in large part because of Peters schooling. Critic Edward Stokes describes A Secret Journey as a "strange and lurid a world in which characters loom out of the mist, portentous and larger-than-life", where Peter not only having an adulterous affair with his sister-in-law, but also with the money-lender Mrs Ragner, who he eventually murders.[11]

Takes place during the middle of the First World War, "Parts I and II [...] in November and December 1915, Part III in August and September 1916",[12] and was originally intended to be the final part of a trilogy. The action takes place mostly in Gelton. The father Denny Fury has returned to the sea, "as a stoker on a liner that has been taken over as a troopship,"[13] and Desmond Fury is a captain in the army. Peter Fury is serving a fifteen-year prison sentence for his murder of Mrs Ragner.

John Fordham comments on the fact that Our Time is Gone "discloses a surprisingly non-belligerent tone for a Second World War novel" and the "unprecedented" for a novel published during a war "central heroism of Joseph Kilkey" who is a conscientious objector.[14]

The action takes place over about a month, "apparently March", though it is not "certain whether the war is still on".[15] Winter Song is, as its title implies, a novel of old age".[16] In the first part of the novel Denny Fury returns home, after having being presumed dead following the torpedoing of his ship. Fanny Fury believing herself widowed has retired to a Catholic hospice for the dying. The novel concludes with Fanny and Denny Fury travelling to Cork, Ireland.

Liverpool Prison 1910. This corresponds to the prison in the fictional Gelton, where Peter Fury is incarcerated from 1912-27.

The concluding novel takes place over roughly three weeks, presumably in 1927, because "Peter Fury has just been released from prison after serving fifteen years for the murder he committed in 1912".[17] Soon after leaving prison in Gelton, Peter travels to Ireland, where shortly afterwards his former lover, his sister-in-law, Sheila joins him. Most of the action takes place in Ireland and it is Hanley's second novel set there, the first being Resurrexit Dominus (1934), that was published in a limited edition of 110 copies.[18] During An End and a Beginning Peter Fury "relives many of the key elements of the [...] life of his family, through [...] flashbacks and interior monologues".[19]

References

  1. ↑ Edward Stokes, The Novels of James Hanley, Melbourne, Australia, F. W. Cheshire, 1964, p. 42
  2. ↑ Stokes, p. 42.
  3. ↑ Stokes, p. 43.
  4. ↑ Chris Gostick, "Extra Material on James Hanley's Boy". In the Oneworld Classics edition of Boy (2007). p.183.
  5. ↑ "Braddock, (Bessie) Elisabeth". Liverpool History On-Line website. International Centre for Digital Content. 2003-01-17. Archived from the original on 16 January 2009. Retrieved 2009-03-01.
  6. ↑ Near to Revolution: The Liverpool general transport Strike North West TUC, 2011
  7. ↑ "The Liverpool General Transport Strike of 1911". London Socialist Historians Group. 9 October 2011. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
  8. ↑ Stokes p. 43
  9. ↑ See for example, Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill, Writing the 1926 General Strike. Cambridge University Press, pp. 152-7.
  10. ↑ Stokes, p.43.
  11. ↑ Stokes p. 60.
  12. ↑ Stokes, p. 43.
  13. ↑ Stokes, p. 61.
  14. ↑ John Fordham, James Hanley: Modernism and the Working Class. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002 p. 150.
  15. ↑ Stokes, p. 43.
  16. ↑ Fordham, p. 194.
  17. ↑ Stokes, p. 43.
  18. ↑ Linneae Gibbs, James Hanley: A Bibliography. Vancouver, Canada: William Hoffer, 1980, p. 39.
  19. ↑ Gostick, p. 201.

See also

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