literature and the mining industry

[Clare Cecil]

I m looking for a list of writers who wrote about the mining industry
who can help me ?

[Logos]

Hello Clare, welcome to LitNet :)

Sheldon Currie has written works on Atlantic Canada's coal mining industry http://www.writers.ns.ca/Writers/scurrie.html including The Glace Bay Miners' Museum which was adapted to a great film starring Helena Bonham Carter called "Margaret's Museum" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113774/

Mary Hallock Foote wrote numerous shorts about gold mining: http://www.online-literature.com/mary-foote/

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about mining in The Silverado Squatters: http://www.online-literature.com/stevenson/silverado-squatters/

Jack London also wrote of mining in many of his stories http://www.online-literature.com/london/

[mollie]

For British literature, am not sure if you need something contemporary, but George Orwell wrote about coalmining in an essay "Down a Coalmine" and also refers to it in "The Road to Wigan Pier", both of which would have referred to mining in the twenties and thirties of the last century. Richard Llewellyn wrote "How Green was my Valley" based on accounts of the coal mining industry and its decline in Wales. "How Green was my Valley" was published just before WWII.

[Niamh]

I know there is one based around Yorkshire...gah! its at the tip of my tongue...!

[mollie]

I know there is one based around Yorkshire...gah! its at the tip of my tongue...!

Saville is it, by David Storey? Or Hines' Kestrel for a Knave?

[Mariamosis]

Germinal - Emile Zola
Breaker Boys - Jan Kubicki

[DaveB]

Upton Sinclair, "King Coal"

[kasie]

A J Cronin - The Citadel.

It's set in the South Wales coalfields in the early years of the twentieth century - Cronin was my mother's doctor when she was a child - I shudder to think of the conditions in which she grew up whenever I read his books.

[kelby_lake]

Didn't DH lawrence write about miners? There's a short story called Strike Pay.

[JBI]

There was a recent British play written about the Pit Men Painters, or something - I can't remember the exact name. It may be worth looking into - I confess, mind mind instantly went to Zola's Germinal, which has already been mentioned.

[The Comedian]

I'll add a fairy tale to the list: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". . . .now, if you'll excuse me I have to go back to whistling while I work. *whistles*

[Niamh]

I'll add a fairy tale to the list: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". . . .now, if you'll excuse me I have to go back to whistling while I work. *whistles*

:D:thumbs_up

[Joreads]

I'll add a fairy tale to the list: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". . . .now, if you'll excuse me I have to go back to whistling while I work. *whistles*

Living up to the avatar :lol:

[Bitterfly]

Didn't DH lawrence write about miners? There's a short story called Strike Pay.

Yep. And he described miners in Women in Love as well.

[amalia1985]

Also, you might want to check out D. H. Lawrence's The Odour Of Chrysanthemus. It provides wonderful descriptions on the daily life of the coalminers' families.

[Virgil]

Didn't DH lawrence write about miners? There's a short story called Strike Pay.

Absolutely D.H. Lawrence. Besides many short stories (especially "Odor of the Chrysanthmums") read his novel Sons and Lovers.

[kasie]

Thanks for drawing my attention to Odour of Chrysanthemums, Virgil - I have not come across it before (have just read it on-line) and it has corrected (slightly) my interpretation that Lawrence had a very jaundiced view of miners. I remember feeling incensed by his portayal of miners, in the person of Morrell Senior in Sons and Lovers, as lumpish, brutish men: the miners I knew were indeed tired men, it was hard physical work, but it did not prevent them from acting as Chapel secretaries (religious and Trade Union officials), Deacons, lay preachers, organists, choir masters and brilliant political arguers, not to mention gardeners, keeping the household in vegetables, and poultry keepers. One miner uncle, tatooed like Lawrence's miner, with coal dust healed into old scars, was an almost professional level player of billiards (to his mother's grief!) but he still managed to be an Insurance collector and general exchange-and-wanted agent in his 'spare' time, as well as a constant fund of groanworthy jokes.

[amalia1985]

As I have written on the previous page of the thread already, if I am not mistaken, the particular short story of D.H. Lawrence is one of my favourites. I remember I first came across it about 5 years ago, during a university course (19th century British Literature), and I was astonished by the way the feelings of the miners' wives were depicted, the scenes between the mothers and the children, the families left behind by the men who were involved in this cruel occupation. I was impressed, because the focus was not primarily on the telling of the circumstances in the mining industry, but on the feelings, and the exploration of the psyche of the miners and their families.

[Virgil]

Thanks for drawing my attention to Odour of Chrysanthemums, Virgil - I have not come across it before (have just read it on-line) and it has corrected (slightly) my interpretation that Lawrence had a very jaundiced view of miners. I remember feeling incensed by his portayal of miners, in the person of Morrell Senior in Sons and Lovers, as lumpish, brutish men: the miners I knew were indeed tired men, it was hard physical work, but it did not prevent them from acting as Chapel secretaries (religious and Trade Union officials), Deacons, lay preachers, organists, choir masters and brilliant political arguers, not to mention gardeners, keeping the household in vegetables, and poultry keepers. One miner uncle, tatooed like Lawrence's miner, with coal dust healed into old scars, was an almost professional level player of billiards (to his mother's grief!) but he still managed to be an Insurance collector and general exchange-and-wanted agent in his 'spare' time, as well as a constant fund of groanworthy jokes.

Very interesting Kasie. This is why I always say that people who think they can understand a time and place through novels (and newspapers as well) will find that reality does not meet imagination. A writer is trying to create a story. There is no reason why the story has to reflect real life, or perhaps the writer is not objective and skews his material. What's foremost to the writer is telling the story.

[Lulim]

Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day -- part of it deals with the miners' strike in Colorado, 1914 and the Ludlow massacre.

[kev67]

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad includes a mine, in this case a silver mine in a South American country. It's a political novel. It helps to keep notes.

I am currently reading How Green Was My Valley, which I find rather melodramatic. It's full of very able, very proud, very stubborn Welsh miners, who don't know they're well off.

[108 fountains]

The head of the family depicted in D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers was a miner. I haven't read the other Lawrence stories mentioned in this thread, but the depiction of the family in Sons and Lovers as a miner/working class family trying to make it was brilliant. The father, Walter Morel, is a young, robust man at the beginning of the novel. He is a drinker, though, and far from a good husband, although he probably doesn't drink any more than his coworkers. He is respected at the mine, but he is self-centered and jealous of his sons as they grow up and get an education and jobs in town that pay higher than his own job. His children are terrified of him when they are young, but learn to hate him as they grow up. He has an accident at the mine when he is middle-aged from which he never fully recovers. From that time on, he becomes more or less a shadow of his old self. By the time he approaches old age, his sons pretty much ignore him as useless and insignificant.

Lawrence gives glimpses into the daily life of the family, and through small, almost insignificant daily events, we get to see relationships between Morel and his wife and his children change as the years pass. (The main story is about the relationships between Mrs. Morel and her sons, but I thought Mr. Morel was actually the most interesting character in the book.)

I did not care much for the other D. H. Lawrence book I've read, Women in Love; I just couldn't identify with any of the man characters. But I though Sons and Lovers was exceptional. Haven't yet read Lady Chatterley's Lover - it must be interesting as it gets mentioned a lot on this Forum and elsewhere.

[Ecurb]

I saw "Pride" over the weekend. It's a new movie about a Gay and Lesbian activist group that raised money for striking Welsh miners in Maggie Thatcher's U.K. of 1984. It's a bit formulaic, but very well done and well worth seeing. One interesting historical note (not mentioned in the film) is that, 30 years later, the Gay community has won the right to marry and other freedoms from (legal) discrimination that they sought . Unions, however, are worse off than they were 30 years ago.

As far as mining literature, I recommend "Angle of Repose" by Wallace Stegner. It is set (in part) in Leadville, Colorado, where I worked (briefly) as a member of the United Mine Workers Union. Yes, as we miners used to enjoy saying, I went down every day.

[ennison]

Sid Chaplin and Corrie. The former good and realistic: the latter sloppily sentimental Scottish socialism.

[Eiseabhal]

Corrie was a kitchen-sink-down-the-mine dramatist. Nice little plays for small amateur groups. I don't think I've heard of Chaplin. Trust you to be reading off the beaten track.

[ennison]

I don't know much about Chaplin myself. Gall. North of England I think. Autodidact I'd guess. The real McCoy though. Orwell was a starry-eyed visitor. Wrote well but he was outside it. Chaplin sounds like he was inside.