Boy (novel)
Docks and River Mersey, Liverpool
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| Author | James Hanley |
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| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Published | 1931 |
| Publisher | Boriswood |
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| Preceded by | Drift (1930) |
| Followed by | Ebb and Flood (1932) |
Boy, James Hanley's second novel, first published in 1931 by Boriswood, is a grim story of the brief life and early death of a thirteen year old stowaway from Liverpool. After several editions had been published in 1931 and 1932, a cheap edition, published in 1934, was prosecuted for obscene libel and the publisher heavily fined.
Boy, James Hanley's second novel, his "first novel of the sea", was first published by Boriswood as a limited edition of 145 and "a public edition which, of regretful necessity, has been somewhat expurgated", in September 1931 (asterisks indicated where "words, phrases and sentences [were] omitted"). There were several subsequent editions in Britain and America. Hanley had originally intended to include Boy in the collection of stories and novellas, Men in Darkness: Five Stories, which was published in September 1931, at the same time as Boy.
Boy is the grim story of an intelligent thirteen-year-old boy, Fearon; from Liverpool who is forced to leave school by his parents so as to help support the family, by working "on the docks as a boiler-scaler". Hating this job and after being beaten by his father Fearon stows away on a ship. When he is discovered, as the ship is shorthanded, he is signed-on to the crew. Fearon's suffering continues on board where he is sexually assaulted. When the ship docks in Alexandria, Egypt, Fearon has his first sexual encounter with a woman, in a brothel, where he contracts syphilis. On the return voyage this disease rapidly develops. The novel concludes with the captain smothering Fearon to put him out of his misery and his body given to the sea. Novelist Hugh Walpole, in a review, described Boy as "A novel that is so unpleasant and ugly, both in narration and in incident, that I wonder the printers did not go on strike while printing it".T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), however, had a very different opinion, and, in a letter to Hanley in 1931, commented "Your character drawing is superb, here and in Boy and in The Last Voyage, and Drift ... You can draw characters as and when you please, with an almost blistering vividness".
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