Ray Coryton Hutchinson
Personal Information
Description
Ray Coryton Hutchinson (23 January 1907 – 3 July 1975) was a best-selling British novelist. His posthumously published novel Rising (1976) was short-listed for the 1976 Booker Prize. He was born in Finchley, Middlesex and educated at Monkton Combe School, near Bath from 1920 to 1924. He received his BA at Oriel College, Oxford in 1927 and joined the advertising department at Colman's in Norwich. He married Margaret Owen Jones in April 1929. His first novel, Thou Hast a Devil, was published in 1930. It was followed by The Answering Glory (1932), and The Unforgotten Prisoner (1933), which sold 150,000 copies in the first month. Subsequent novels also sold very well and in 1935 he left Colman's to begin writing full-time. In March 1940 he joined the army, and in July was posted as captain in the 8th Battalion of the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment). He travelled widely during the Second World War, while continuing to write. In October 1945, after preparing the official history of the Paiforce campaign, he was demobilised with the rank of major. After the war he wrote many more successful novels, often recommended by book clubs. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in June 1962. He died before completing the last chapter of his novel, Rising (1976). It was published in September of the same year and short-listed for the Booker Prize in November 1976. His published work comprises 17 novels and 28 short stories, as well as one play, Last Train South (1938)
Books
Elephant and Castle
"A meticulous editing job, under the supervision of Mr. Hutchinson himself, has sharpened up many of the parts of the novel that seemed to us discursive and lacking in clarity... Second, the Book of the Month has selected this for February. Hence our report is repeated only in part, as the novel in its final form lives up to our high hopes for Mr. Hutchinson over years of following him with keen appreciation...This novel could be viewed from several angles. It might be looked upon as another Knock on Any Door in a study of a London slum, and the effect of environment on character -- a sordid, sultry study of the attempt to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Or it might be viewed as kin to Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men- a compassionate analysis of a youth whose strength was greater than he knew, whose love for the helpless handicapped could be expressed only in service. Or it could be likened to the popular stories of thwarted, possessive women, determined to control the lives of those closest to them- and destroying what they thought to mold. It is all of these -- and establishes an obsessive claim on one's interest. The story is set in the frame of a murder. A woman, once beautiful, is dead -- and her husband, twice accused of murder or intent to murder, is convicted, and dies on the gallows. The story in between is that of an incredible marriage made credible. A girl, gently born and disappointed in the man she was to have married, flaunts her self-sacrifice and marries a boy of the slums, convinced that she can remake him to her pattern. In the process, she spurns the help she might have had from Elizabeth, a woman whom she thought had wronged her, and Trevon, head of a settlement, living out a penance of his sex-ridden youth. She destroys everything she might have had, even, in an agony of hate, the happiness of her daughter. At times, there are phases of the development that fail to ring true; at times, the woman seems a lay figure. But always, the husband, with his own strange but rather beautiful code, is handled with tender understanding. A book that deserves to be read."--Kirkus