Hugh garner biography

Hugh Garner Biography

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(1913–79), Storm Below, Cabbagetown, The Silence on the Shore, The Intruders, The Yellow Sweater

Canadiannovelist and short-story writer, born in Batley, Yorkshire, and taken to Canada when he was six. Garner is regarded as one of the major exponents of realism in Canadian fiction. During the 1930s he travelled in the West, eking out a living from whatever temporary employment he could find, and fought for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War. His Second World War naval experiences provided the basis for his first novel, Storm Below (1949), which describes six days at sea in 1943. Garner's early life in Cabbagetown, a run-down inner city district of Toronto, underlay Cabbagetown (1950) which initially appeared in a heavily edited version; only when the full text was published in 1968 did it receive critical acclaim as one of Canada's finest social novels. It is written in the clear and direct prose style that characterizes all Garner's fiction and describes the hardship of Depression life in working-class Toronto and the lack of oppo

Hugh Garner

Canadian writer (1913–1979)

Hugh Garner

BornFebruary 22, 1913 (1913-02-22)

Batley, England

DiedJune 30, 1979(1979-06-30) (aged 66)

Toronto, Canada

NationalityBritish, Canadian
EducationDanforth Technical High School
OccupationNovelist
Known forwriting

Hugh Garner (February 22, 1913 – June 30, 1979) was a British-born Canadian novelist.

Biography

Early life

Hugh Garner was born on February 22, 1913, in Batley, Yorkshire, England. He came to Canada in 1919 with his parents, and was raised in Toronto, Ontario where he attended Danforth Technical High School.[1]

During the Great Depression, he rode the rails in both Canada and the United States, and then joined the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.[1] During World War II he served in the Royal Canadian Navy.

Career

Following the war, Garner concentrated on his writing. He published his first novel, Storm Below, in 1949. Garner's most famous novel, Cabbagetown, depicted life in the Toronto n

THE STORMS BELOW: THE TURBULENT LIFE AND TIMES OF HUGH GARNER






The story of Hugh Garner, prolific writer of books and short stories throughout the middle years of this century, needed to be told. Garner had done this himself in his autobiography One Damn Thing After Another (Simon and Schuster of Canada, 1975), but he did it at a time in his life when his critical faculties were diminishing - the cumulative effect of years of hard drinking - while his receptivity to editorial advice - never great - had vanished under the weight of success. Thus there was certainly room for a more objective account of the life and work of one of Canada's best-known writers.

In ten well laid-out chapters, Paul Stuewe, who confesses to a certain mental kinship with his subject, follows the young Garner from his entry as an English immigrant with his mother and little brother to join an irresponsible father, through a youth ill spent in Toronto's schools, Depression hardships, a stint in the Spanish Civil War and in the Canadian navy during World War II, to his settling down in Toronto a

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