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Book Cover for: Hindle Wakes, Stanley Houghton

Hindle Wakes

Stanley Houghton

In the pre-WWI Lancashire town of Hindle, Fanny's parents discover that she's involved with a wealthy young man who's engaged to someone else. They set out to ensure that he'll do the right thing and marry Fanny, only to learn that she has her own ideas on the matter. One of the first plays to feature a working-class female protagonist.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Oberon Books
  • Publish Date: Feb 26th, 2013
  • Pages: 112
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.20in - 5.10in - 0.30in - 0.30lb
  • EAN: 9781849434218
  • Categories: European - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

About the Author

Stanley Houghton (1881-1913) was born in Ashton-upon-Mersey, Sale, Cheshire and went into his father's cotton business where he worked until the success of Hindle Wakes in 1912 allowed him to finally achieve his ambition to become a professional writer. He died just a year later of meningitis.

Praise for this book

"An extraordinary piece... impossible to watch without feeling profound respect for playwright Stanley Houghton and the message he conveys." - What's On Stage (5 stars)

"A fascinating look into a rarely considered part of our national history... and a fitting way to celebrate [the play's] 100th anniversary." - The Good Review

"In its day Hindle Wakes must have been astonishing, as groundbreaking as A Doll's House - and there is still something rather marvellous about its attacks upon the sexual "double standard'" - Telegraph

"Houghton's play belongs to an extraordinary period in British drama... And who is to say that, 100 years after Hindle Wakes, we still don't live in a world that has one law for sexually adventurous men and another for women?" - Guardian

"Even in these permissive times, the controversy that must have surrounded the play when originally performed in 1912 is clear, and it is impossible to watch without feeling profound respect for playwright Stanley Houghton and the message he conveys." - What's On Stage (5 stars)

"Houghton's script is well observed and awake to new and untraced boundaries between classes which had emerged with the suddenness of industrial progress. His work owes a debt to Ibsen, particularly in its then-controversial sexual frankness and proto-feminism, as well as to Chekhov in its neat balancing of the comic and the dramatically truthful." - Time Out (London)