Harold Heslop was an English author, left-wing political activist, and coalminer, from near Bishop Auckland, County Durham. Heslop's first novel Goaf was published in 1926, but it was in a Russian translation as Pod vlastu uglya and did not appear in England until 1934. In 1929, he also published his first novel in England, The Gate of a Strange Field, about the 1926 United Kingdom general strike. His last novel, The Earth Beneath, was published in 1946.
Early life and education
Heslop was born on 1 October 1898 in the village of Hunwick, near Bishop Auckland, County Durham, to William Heslop, coalminer, and his wife, Isabel. The Heslops had been miners for several generations. Heslop attended King James I Academy on a scholarship until he was thirteen, when the family moved to Boulby on the northYorkshire coast. Because his new home was too far from the nearest grammar school, Heslop began working underground at Boulby ironstone mine, where his father was now the manager. Shortly after, his mother died, his father remarried, and the family moved to Northumberland. Heslop then moved to South Shields and started work at Harton colliery, where he remained for eleven years. After World War I, Heslop became active in left-wing politics as secretary of a local Independent Labour Party branch and represented the miners of Harton colliery on the council of the Durham Miners' Association. In 1923, he won a scholarship to study at the Central Labour College, a British higher education institution supported by trade unions, in London which he attended from 1924 to 1926.
Career
In 1926, Heslop's first novel Goaf was published, but it was in a Russian translation as Pod vlastu uglya and did not appear in England until 1934. This novel, about mining in northern England, "sold half a million copies in Russia and made Heslop's name there", though he was only able to transfer a small part of his royalties to England. Heslop returned to Harton in 1926, where he unsuccessfully contested a seat on the South Shields Town Council for the Labour Party, sponsored by the Miners Lodge, but because of the contraction of the coal industry he became unemployed and the Heslops moved to London, where he worked at various things. Heslop's political activity included working for the British Communist Party's general secretary, Harry Pollitt against Ramsay MacDonald for the Seaham division of Durham in the 1929 election. In 1929, he also published his first novel in England, The Gate of a Strange Field, which was about the General Strike of 1926. The following year, another novel Journey Beyond, about unemployment in London, was published. Also in 1930, he was invited to attend the Second Plenum of the International Bureau of Revolutionary Literature in the Soviet Union. Subsequently, four of his novels were published in the Soviet Union, including Red Earth, a utopian novel about a successful revolution in Britain which was never published in the UK. He also worked in London for the Soviet trading mission and later Intourist. In 1934, his novel Goaf was released in English. Heslop also published a detective novel, The Crime of Peter Ropner. In 1935, Last Cage Down was published, and in 1937, under the pseudonym Lincoln J. White, Abdication, was released. During the war the Heslops evacuated to Taunton in Somerset, where he worked on his most successful novel in Britain, The Earth Beneath which was published in 1946 and sold 9000 copies. Although he continued to write, this was his last novel. While in Somerset Heslop joined the Labour Party and, in 1948, won a seat on the Taunton Town Council; however, he failed in a later attempt to become a Labour Member of Parliament for North Devon, coming third in the 1955 general election. After Heslop's death in 1983, his complete writings were donated to Durham University.
Works
Heslop's literary career began in 1926 with the Russian version of Goaf and then, starting with The Gate of a Strange Field, Heslop published five novels in England between 1929 and 1946, while his autobiography, Out of the Old Earth, was published posthumously. Harold Heslops's first novel published in England, The Gate of a Strange Field is about the General Strike of 1926, which he had witnessed in London. The novel took its title from a phrase in H. G. Wells' novel Meanwhile. It was generally well-reviewed, The New York Times, for example, commented, that "the sheer honesty of the book makes it powerful", but the critic of The Communist Review found it "full of cliches" and "unending literary jargon" A more recent discussion, however, found that "the most interesting feature of the novel... is not the study of the labour movement but of the hero's sexual repression". Heslop's next novel Journey Beyond deals with the subject of unemployment. In 1934, the original English version of Heslop's novel Goaf was published, as well as The Crime of Peter Ropner, which is an "attempt at a crime novel from a left-wing perspective". Crime novelist Dorothy L. Sayers reviewed it, and while disliking much about it, found that it had "a crude and sordid power". Last Cage Down, set in a coal-field, was released in 1935. Over ten years after his death, Heslop's autobiography Out of the Old Earth was published, which has been described, as a "rich recollections of childhood in the coalfield, portraits of his family fine descriptions of working life above and below ground".
Personal life
On 27 March 1926 Harold Heslop married Phyllis Hannah Varndell, a clerk at Selfridges whose family was active in left-wing politics. Heslop died 10 November 1983.
