Love on the Dole, published in 1933, was Walter Greenwood's first novel and has never been out of print since. Written on scraps of paper as he tramped the streets looking for work, it has since been made into a film, a play and a musical. Set in Hanky Park, a fictional area of Salford during the depression, the novel was the literary bombshell of its day and the prototype for the 'kitchen sink' school of writing. The gritty realism he depicts of clogged rows of back-to-back houses, pawnshops, gas lights and debt, louse ridden people reveals Greenwoods's burning desire to document the social injustices of the time. He is probably the only English novelist since Dickens who was able to combine true mass appeal with passionate radicalism and bitterly honest documentation with writing of high artistic quality. What makes this book a classic, however, is that simple but elusive art of telling a good story and getting the characters right. The book combines personal documentation and outrage with storylines and situations that belong to the novels of the romantic era. Harry and Sally Hardcastle are growing up in grinding poverty but Sally sees a way out by taking up with local crook Sam Grundy. This beauty and the beast relationship is interwoven with that of Larry Meath, our gallant but doomed hero. Everyone who passes in and out of the storyline, from pawnbrokers to petty officials, are all described in convincing everyday detail and all display universal attitudes and fundamental choices. In Love on the Dole, Walter Greenwood eloquently and amusingly depicts an era that is alien to us today. But in our society of mass consumerism and full supermarket shelves it is too easy to forget that not that long ago people did not even have the means to feed themselves. These injustices should not be forgotten and the book should be required reading for all schoolchildren.
