The Birmingham Group

1 Introduction: `They at Least Were Not Hybrids . - A Multiplicity in Unity: The Birmingham Writers and Their City. - Shaping Influences: Finding the Exotic in the Everyday. - `Going Over : The Cultural Diaspora. - `At last the British are Coming : Prevailing and Contemporary Critiques of Working-Class Literature. - The Ethnographic Turn. - 2 This Working Life: Work and the Workplace. - A Fellow Traveller? Henry Green: Birmingham s Adoptive Proletarian. - Walter Allen: `As a Film Director might present it : Blind Man s Ditch. - `As Unpolitical a Man as I Have Ever Met : Leslie Halward. - Leslie Halward: `Belcher s Hod . - 3 Feeling the Pinch: Unemployment. - A Qualitative Deficit: Filling the Statistical Gap. - Walter Brierley: Frustration and Bitterness: A Colliery Banksman. - Walter Brierley: Means Test Man. - John Hampson: `Man About the House . - Walter Allen: Innocence Is Drowned. - 4 Writing Their Selves: Subjectivity and Representation in Birmingham Group Narrative. -A Reluctant Collier? Walter Brierley: `Body . - Walter Brierley: Sandwichman. - Leslie Halward: `A Broken Engagement . - Peter Chamberlain: An Eavesdropper s Secrets: `Mr. Marris Reputation and `What the Hell? . - John Hampson: Saturday Night at the Greyhound. - 5 Conclusion. - Coda: Dispersal. - The Legacy.