James Hanley was a British novelist, short story writer, and playwright of Irish descent. Hanley published his first novel Drift in 1930 and in the 1930s and 1940s he wrote a number of novels and short stories about seamen and their families. This included Boy, which was the subject of a notorious obscenity trail. Hanley came from a family of seamen and spent two years at sea himself. But after World War II there was less emphasis on the sea in his works. While he was frequently praised by the critics, Hanley's novels did not sell well and in the late 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s he wrote plays, mainly for the BBC, first for radio and then for television, but also for the theatre. Hanley returned to the novel in the 1970s and his last novel, A Kingdom, was published in 1978, when he was eighty. 

September 3rd, 1897 in Liverpool  /  Died:   Nov 11th, 1985