“The Sky Above and the Earth Below”: The Tramping Narratives of Jack Hilton

Abstract

This essay examines the representations of tramping in the work of the Rochdale writer, Jack Hilton (1900-1983), and argues that the act is considered as a key expression of working-class cultural and political autonomy in the context of 1930s Britain. Whilst Hilton and his writing was applauded by his contemporaries in George Orwell and W.H. Auden, his work fell into obscurity until the chance discovery of Caliban Shrieks (1935) in Salford's Working-Class Movement Library in 2021. Through readings of this novel, alongside Champion (1938) and English Ways (1940), my article explores how Hilton develops the figure of the tramp from an individualistic symbol of anti-productivist rebellion into a representation of a broader working-class cultural practice. In contrast to Orwell's depiction of tramping as social failure (filtered through middle-class perspective), Hilton's semi-autobiographical writing reframes the figure as one that asserts working-class agency. My paper therefore challenges dominant literary narratives of vagrancy, and contributes to a reimagining of working-class culture, community, and the English national identity in the interwar period.