Patrick Hamilton (writer)
Patrick Hamilton | |
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Bruce Hamilton (brother) |
Anthony Walter Patrick Hamilton (17 March 1904 – 23 September 1962)[1] was an English playwright and novelist. He was well regarded by
His two most successful plays, Rope and Gas Light, were made into famous films: Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948) and the British-made Gaslight (1940), followed by the 1944 American version.
Life and works
Hamilton was born on 17 March 1904, at Dale House, in the Sussex village of Hassocks, near Brighton,[2] to (Walter) Bernard Hamilton (1863-1930), a writer and non-practising barrister, and his second wife, Ellen Adèle (née Hockley; 1861-1934), who wrote as "Olivia Roy".[3][4] His parents were pretentious and snobbish; Bernard Hamilton thought himself to be "a great writer although the few books he penned — soppy romances and some hotchpotch of religion and spirituality — were mediocre at best", "frequently boasted about his genealogical table", and "pretended to be the rightful heir to the throne of Scotland", and Ellen "treated her domestics with haughtiness" and "attempted to breed her children as members of the high society".[5] Due to his father's alcoholism and financial ineptitude, the family spent much of Hamilton's childhood living in boarding houses in Chiswick and Hove. His education was patchy, and ended just after his fifteenth birthday when his mother withdrew him from Westminster School. His first published work was a poem, "Heaven", in the Poetry Review in 1919.[6] His sister Lalla, acted under the name of Diana Hamilton and starred in Sutton Vane's Outward Bound.
After a brief career as an actor, he became a novelist in his early twenties with the publication of Monday Morning (1925), written when he was nineteen. Craven House (1926) and Twopence Coloured (1928) followed, but his first real success was the play Rope (1929, known as Rope's End in America).
The Midnight Bell (1929) is based upon Hamilton's falling in love with a prostitute and was later published along with The Siege of Pleasure (1932) and The Plains of Cement (1934) as the semi-autobiographical trilogy Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935).
Hamilton disliked many aspects of modern life. He was disfigured badly when he was run over by a car in the late 1920s:
During his later life, Hamilton developed in his writing a misanthropic authorial voice which became more disillusioned, cynical and bleak as time passed.
Hamilton had begun to consume alcohol excessively while still a relatively young man. After a declining career and melancholia, he died in 1962 of
A collection of Hamilton's manuscripts and correspondence can be found at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.[1]
Bibliography
Novels
- Monday Morning (1925)
- Craven House (1926, revised edition 1943)
- Twopence Coloured (1928)
- The Midnight Bell (1929)
- The Siege of Pleasure (1932)
- The Plains of Cement (1934)
- Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (1935 – trilogy of The Midnight Bell, The Siege of Pleasure and The Plains of Cement)
- Impromptu in Moribundia (1939)
- Hangover Square (1941)
- The Slaves of Solitude (1947)
- The West Pier(1952)
- Mr. Stimpson and Mr. Gorse (1953)
- Unknown Assailant (1955)
Stage plays
- Rope (1929)
- The Procurator of Judea (1930; unpublished)
- John Brown's Body (1931; unpublished)
- Gas Light(1938), also known as Angel Street
- The Duke in Darkness (1943)
- The Governess (1946; unpublished)
- Caller Anonymous (1952; unpublished)
- The Man Upstairs (1953)
- Miss Roach (1958; unpublished)
- Hangover Square (1965; unpublished)
Radio plays
- Rope. BBC National Programme, 18 January 1932. Adapted from the stage play qv
- Conversation in a Train. BBC Regional Programme. 2 June 1936
- Money with Menaces. BBC National Programme, 4 January 1937
- To the Public Danger. BBC National Programme, 25 February 1939
- Gas Light. BBC Home Service, 24 November 1939. Adapted from the play qv
- This is Impossible. BBC Home Service, 27 December 1941
- The Duke in Darkness. 17 April 1944. Adapted from the stage play qv
- The Governess. BBC Home Service, 1 November 1948. Adapted from the stage play qv
- Caller Anonymous. BBC Home Service, 7 March 1952
- 20,000 Streets Under the Sky. BBC Radio 4, 17 Nov 1989
Recent revival
Hamilton was the subject of a special season of films in March 2005 at the
References
- ISBN 9781871551990.
- ^ "Births, Marriages, and Deaths". Sussex Agricultural Express. 26 March 1904. p. 12.
- ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ "Historyeye |Novelist Patrick Hamilton's Ancestry".
- ^ Odisea, no. 21, "Patrick Hamilton's Craven House: Parodying the Edwardian Weltanschauung", Roy Janoch, 2020, p. 46
- ^ "Patrick Hamilton: An Inventory of His Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center". Lib.utexas.edu. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
- ^ Michael Holroyd, in his introduction to the 2010 Vintage edition, says that this accident took place in January 1932 when Hamilton was walking with his wife and sister along Earls Court Road
Further reading
- ISBN 0-09-458700-0
- Jones, Nigel. (1991) Through a Glass Darkly: The Life of Patrick Hamilton, Scribners, ISBN 978-0-948238-39-0
- French, Sean. (1993) Patrick Hamilton: A Life, Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-14353-9
External links
- Patrick Hamilton Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
- Black Spring Press New publishers of The Gorse Trilogy and Craven House
- Constable & Robinson Patrick Hamilton's original UK publisher, and current publisher of The Slaves of Solitude
- New York Review of Books Classics American reissues of Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky and The Slaves of Solitude
- The lost worlds of Patrick Hamilton: a review in the TLS, 16 May 2007
- Lodge, David (17 February 2007). "Boarding-house blues". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 February 2007.—Review of The Slaves of Solitude
- A biography can be found at www.allmovie.com
- Patrick Hamilton at IMDb
- Patrick Hamilton at the Internet Broadway Database
- Rhodes, Dan (13 March 2004). "Unhappy hour". The Guardian.—Review of The Midnight Bell
- Sinclair, Iain (12 March 2006). "Pulped Fictions". The Guardian.—Article on Hamilton's screen adaptations
- Article on Hamilton revival
- Essay on Hamilton's treatment of London pub culture
- "The lost worlds of Patrick Hamilton": D. J. Taylor's introduction to the Gorse Trilogy from TLS, 16 May 2007.
- Simon Goulding's exploration of the London of Patrick Hamilton's 'The Midnight Bell'