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Children of the Dead End
£4.99
A Classic of Working-Class Scottish Literature
Patrick MacGill's landmark autobiographical novel
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About the Ebook
Based on personal memories of his life in Ireland and Scotland in the early 1900s, this was Patrick MacGill's first novel.
It tells the story of Dermod Flynn an independent and feisty youth who earns a meagre living as an itinerant farm hand in Donegal and County Tyrone before coming to Scotland with a potato-picking squad.
After living on the road, labouring and navvying, Dermod finds work on the hydro-electric scheme at Kinlochleven –an extraordinarily brutal and unforgiving environment where hundreds died on one of the biggest engineering projects of its time.Against this background, Dermod reads voraciously, begins to discover his talent as a writer and is eventually lured to Fleet Street, where he briefly becomes a journalist.
Peopled with extraordinary characters, Children of the Dead End is a gritty and uncompromising expose of the near slavery endured by the poor in Scotland and Ireland at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Why You'll Love This Ebook
- Read one of the great early-twentieth-century working-class novels
- Discover the hardships of Irish and Scottish navvies through powerful prose
- Experience a literary classic that exposed the realities of migrant labour
- Read another celebrated title from Birlinn Ltd - Independent Scottish Publisher
Reviews
'An evocative read about working class life.. should be on every school's reading list' Scottish Field
'A superb account of its times' Irish Times
'Raw, lyrical, angry, Children of the Dead End still retains its affecting power' The List
About the Author
Patrick MacGill, ‘the Navvy Poet’ was born in Donegal in 1889 and died in Florida in 1963. He wrote a number of bestselling books (many of which are semi-autobiographical), including, Moleskin Joe, The Rat-pit and The Great Push, as well as a number of poetry collections.
Publication Details
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd
Publication Date: 03 March 2016
Print Length: 344 pages (Ebook edition)
ISBN (Ebook): 9780857907035
Format: Ebook
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