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{{Short description|English writer (1925–1994)}}
{{distinguish|John Waine|John Wayne}}
{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
'''John Barrington Wain''' [[Order of the British Empire|CBE]] (14 March 1925 – 24 May 1994) was an English poet, novelist, and critic, associated with the literary group known as "[[The Movement (literature)|The Movement]]". He worked for most of his life as a freelance [[journalist]] and author, writing and reviewing for newspapers and the radio.

==Life and education==
Wain was born and grew up in [[Stoke-on-Trent]], [[Staffordshire]], the son of a dentist, Arnold Wain, and his wife Annie, née Turner. He had an older sister and a younger brother, Noel. After attending [[Newcastle-under-Lyme School|Newcastle-under-Lyme High School]], he entered [[St. John's College, Oxford]], gaining a first in his [[Bachelor of Arts|BA]] in 1946 and an [[Master of Arts (Oxbridge)|MA]] in 1950.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sillery |first1=A. |last2=Sillery |first2=V. |title=St. John's College Biographical Register 1919-1975 |volume=3 |publisher=Oxford: St. John’s College |year=1975 |page=180}}</ref> He was a Fereday [[Oxbridge Fellow|Fellow]] of St John's between 1946 and 1949.<ref name=Who>{{Cite web |title=Wain, John Barrington |url=http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U176049 |work=[[Who Was Who]] |date=December 2007 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |access-date=5 February 2009}}</ref> On 4 July 1947, Wain married Marianne Urmston (born 1923 or 1924), but they divorced in 1956. He then married Eirian Mary James (1920–1988), deputy director of the recorded sound department of the British Council, on 1 January 1960. They had three sons and lived mainly in [[Wolvercote]], Oxford. Wain married his third wife, Patricia Adams (born 1942 or 1943), an art teacher, in 1989. He died in Oxford on 24 May 1994.<ref name="odnb">{{Cite ODNB |first=Bernard |last=Richards |title=Wain, John Barrington (1925–1994) |id=55823}}</ref>

==Literary career==
Wain wrote his first novel, ''Hurry on Down'', in 1953: a comic [[Picaresque novel|picaresque]] story about an unsettled university graduate who rejects the standards of conventional society. Other notable novels include ''[[Strike the Father Dead]]'' (1962), a tale of a [[jazz]]man's rebellion against his conventional father, and ''[[Young Shoulders]]'' (1982), winner of the [[Whitbread Prize]], in which a young boy deals with the death of loved ones.

Wain was also a prolific poet and critic, with critical works on fellow [[English Midlands|Midland]] writers [[Arnold Bennett]], [[Samuel Johnson]] (winning him the 1974 [[James Tait Black Memorial Prize]]), and Shakespeare. Others for whom he wrote included the Americans [[Theodore Roethke]] and [[Edmund Wilson]]. He himself was the subject of a bibliography by David Gerard.<ref>British Library [http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=moreTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=BLL01008768506&indx=2&recIds=BLL01008768506&recIdxs=1&elementId=1&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&frbg=&&vl(488279563UI0)=any&dscnt=0&scp.scps=scope%3A%28BLCONTENT%29&tb=t&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&srt=rank&tab=local_tab&dum=true&vl(freeText0)=David%20Gerard%20John%20Wain&dstmp=1524161915468 Retrieved 19 April 2018.]</ref>

==Academic career==
Wain taught at the [[University of Reading]] during the late 1940s and early 1950s, and in 1963 spent a term as professor of [[rhetoric]] at [[Gresham College]], London. He was the first fellow in creative arts at [[Brasenose College, Oxford]] (1971–1972), and was appointed a supernumerary fellow in 1973.<ref name=Who/> In the same year he was elected to the five-year post of [[Oxford Professor of Poetry|Professor of Poetry]] at the [[University of Oxford]]: some of his lectures appear in his book ''Professing Poetry''. Wain was appointed a [[Order of the British Empire|CBE]] in 1984. He was made an honorary fellow of his old college, St John's, Oxford, in 1985.<ref name="odnb" />

==Literary associations==
Wain was often referred to as one of the "[[Angry Young Men]]", a term applied to 1950s writers such as [[John Braine]], [[John Osborne]], [[Alan Sillitoe]] and [[Keith Waterhouse]], as radicals who opposed the British establishment and conservative elements of society at that time. Indeed, he contributed to ''[[Declaration (1957 book)|Declaration]]'', an anthology by writers associated with the philosophy, and a chapter of his novel ''Hurry on Down'' was excerpted in a popular paperback sampler, ''[[Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men]]''.<ref name="Maschler">{{Cite book |title=''Declaration'' |editor=Maschler, Tom |year=1957 |location=London |publisher=MacGibbon and Kee}}</ref><ref name="Feldman and Gartenberg">{{Cite book |title=''Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men'' |author=Feldman, Gene and Gartneberg, Max (editors) |year=1958 |location=New York |publisher=Citadel Press}}</ref>

Yet it may be more accurate to link Wain with [[The Movement (literature)|The Movement]], a group of post-war poets including [[Kingsley Amis]], [[D. J. Enright]], [[Thom Gunn]], [[Donald Davie]], [[Elizabeth Jennings (poet)|Elizabeth Jennings]] and [[Philip Larkin]]. Amis and Larkin, good friends of Wain's for a time, were also associated with the "Angries". But aside from their poetry, it may be more apposite to refer to them, as was sometimes done at the time, as "The New University Wits" – writers who wished to communicate rather than experiment and often did so in a comic manner. However, they all became more serious after their initial work. Wain is still known for his poetry (for example, his '' Apology for Understatement'') and literary interests (contributions to ''The Observer''), although his work is no longer as popular as it was. Critical remarks about him by Amis and Larkin in their posthumously published letters may have contributed to dimming his reputation.{{cn|date=September 2024}}

Wain's tutor at [[Oxford University|Oxford]] had been [[C. S. Lewis]]. He encountered, but did not see himself as a part of, the group of Lewis's literary acquaintances, the [[Inklings]].<ref>As an undergraduate, Wain would not have been considered for what passed for "membership" anyway.</ref> Wain was as serious about literature as the Inklings, and believed, as they did, in the primacy of literature as communication, but as a modern [[Realism (arts)|realist]] writer he shared neither their [[Conservatism|conservative]] social beliefs nor their propensity for [[fantasy]].{{cn|date=September 2024}}

==Works==
===Novels===
{{columns-list|colwidth=30em|
*''Hurry on Down'' (1953), also ''Born in Captivity'' (US title)
*''Living in the Present'' (1955)
*''The Contenders'' (1958)
*''A Travelling Woman'' (1959)
*''Strike the Father Dead'' (1962)
*''The Young Visitors'' (1965)
*''The Smaller Sky'' (1967)
*''A Winter in the Hills'' (1970)
*''The Pardoner's Tale'' (1978)
*''Lizzie's Floating Shop'' (1981)
*''[[Young Shoulders]]'' (1982), also ''The Free Zone Starts Here'' (winner of the [[Whitbread Prize]])
*''Where the Rivers Meet'' (1988)
*''Comedies'' (1990)
*''Hungry Generations'' (1994)

===Poetry===
*''A Word Carved on a Sill'' (1956)
*''Weep Before God'' (1961)
*''Wildtrack'' (1965)
*''Letters to Five Artists, poems'' (1969)
*''Feng, a poem'' (1975)
*''Poems 1949–79'' (1980)
*''Poems for the Zodiac'' (1980)
*''The Twofold'' (1981)
*''Open Country'' (1987)

===Short stories===
*''Manhood'' (1980)
*''The Valentine Generation''
*''Down our Way''
*''A Message from the Pig-man''

===Plays===
*''Johnson is Leaving'' (1973), monodrama
*''Harry in the Night'' (1975)
*''Frank'' (1984), radio play

===Short story collections===
*''Nuncle and Other Stories'' (1960)
*''Death of the Hind Legs and Other Stories'' (1966)
*''The Life Guard'' (1971)

===Literary criticism===
*''Interpretations, essays on twelve English poems'' (1955 and 1972)
*''Preliminary Essays'' (1957)
*''American Allegory'' (1959)
*''Strength and Isolation in "The Living Milton"'', ed. Frank Kermode (1960)
*''Essays on Literature and Ideas'' (1963)
*''The Living World of Shakespeare, a playgoer's guide'' (1964)
*''Theodore Roethke'' (1964) (in Critical Quarterly)
*''Arnold Bennett'' (1967)
*''A House for the truth, critical essays'' (1972)
*''Johnson as critic'' (1973)
*''An Edmund Wilson celebration'' (1978)
*''Edmund Wilson, the man and his work'' (1978)
*''Professing poetry'' (1979)
*''Introduction to Milton's Paradise Lost'' (1991) published by The Folio Society (2003)
*''The Journals of James Boswell, 1762-1795'' (1992) editor

===Biography===
*''Sprightly Running: Part of an Autobiography'' (1962)
*''Samuel Johnson: A Biography'' (1975)
*''Dear Shadows. Portraits from Memory'' (1986)
}}

==See also==
{{portal|Poetry}}
*List of [[Gresham Professor of Rhetoric|Gresham Professors of Rhetoric]]
* [https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadID=00990 John Wain Collection] at the [[Harry Ransom Center]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

== Literature ==

* Elizabeth Hatziolou, 1997. ''John Wain, A Man of Letters''
* Diana Glyer, 2007. ''The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community'' {{ISBN|978-0-87338-890-0}}
* Edward Black, 1965. "L'Art de John Wain, poète": PhD thesis, Université de Caen, 1965
* K. Kumar, 1999. [http://bizlapp.com/johnwain "The Novels of John Wain"]: , PhD Thesis, Ranchi University

{{Angry young men}}
{{Inklings}}

{{Authority control}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wain, John}}
[[Category:1925 births]]
[[Category:1994 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Stoke-on-Trent]]
[[Category:Alumni of St John's College, Oxford]]
[[Category:People educated at Newcastle-under-Lyme School]]
[[Category:Academics of the University of Reading]]
[[Category:Commanders of the Order of the British Empire]]
[[Category:Fellows of St John's College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Fellows of Brasenose College, Oxford]]
[[Category:Academics of Gresham College]]
[[Category:Inklings]]
[[Category:20th-century English male writers]]
[[Category:James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients]]
[[Category:Oxford Professors of Poetry]]
[[Category:English literary critics]]
[[Category:20th-century English novelists]]
[[Category:20th-century English poets]]
[[Category:English male poets]]
[[Category:English male novelists]]
[[Category:English male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:Writers from Staffordshire]]