Malachi Whitaker, The Journey Home and Other Stories
Valerie Waterhouse on Malachi Whitaker: Women and Social Class
Malachi Whitaker ‘is one of the great English short story writers,’ says Philip Hensher. Yet her work – much of it about Yorkshire’s working-class people – remains surprisingly little-known. The eighth of eleven children of a Bradford bookbinder, she left school aged 13 and went to work for her father, but between 1929 and 1949, she published five volumes of short stories and a memoir with Jonathan Cape. Reviews of her fiction were mostly glowing. ‘Were it not that the characters are taken from a very different world, I should be tempted to make a comparison with the stories of Katherine Mansfield,’ wrote Vita Sackville-West.
Yet, as Sackville-West suggests, Whitaker’s range extends far beyond the provincial and the prosaic. Her stories – particularly those about women – push against social convention, exploring little-discussed themes including abortion, inappropriate sexual behaviour, and infertility. Often viewed as a social realist, Whitaker’s style could be as daring as her content, moving from the fragmentary, to the episodic, to the surreal. Settings, too, expand far beyond Bradford – to Morecambe, London, Dorset, Paris and Bruges.
Using Whitaker’s stories about women as a prism, this lecture will consider how she employed diverse literary styles and settings to explore issues affecting working-class and upwardly mobile females – through childhood, singledom, wifedom, motherhood and old age. Whitaker regularly mined her own life for inspiration, and we shall see how her personal narrative and character emerge from the work.
Live online lecture and seminar with Valerie Waterhouse, University of Huddersfield.
Set reading: The Journey Home and Other Stories (Persephone)
Saturday 25 October 2025
18.00-20.00 British Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Time
Morning/lunch time in the Americas
Prices
£32.00 full price
£27.00 students
£27.00 CAMcard holders
Valerie Waterhouse on Malachi Whitaker: Women and Social Class
Malachi Whitaker ‘is one of the great English short story writers,’ says Philip Hensher. Yet her work – much of it about Yorkshire’s working-class people – remains surprisingly little-known. The eighth of eleven children of a Bradford bookbinder, she left school aged 13 and went to work for her father, but between 1929 and 1949, she published five volumes of short stories and a memoir with Jonathan Cape. Reviews of her fiction were mostly glowing. ‘Were it not that the characters are taken from a very different world, I should be tempted to make a comparison with the stories of Katherine Mansfield,’ wrote Vita Sackville-West.
Yet, as Sackville-West suggests, Whitaker’s range extends far beyond the provincial and the prosaic. Her stories – particularly those about women – push against social convention, exploring little-discussed themes including abortion, inappropriate sexual behaviour, and infertility. Often viewed as a social realist, Whitaker’s style could be as daring as her content, moving from the fragmentary, to the episodic, to the surreal. Settings, too, expand far beyond Bradford – to Morecambe, London, Dorset, Paris and Bruges.
Using Whitaker’s stories about women as a prism, this lecture will consider how she employed diverse literary styles and settings to explore issues affecting working-class and upwardly mobile females – through childhood, singledom, wifedom, motherhood and old age. Whitaker regularly mined her own life for inspiration, and we shall see how her personal narrative and character emerge from the work.
Live online lecture and seminar with Valerie Waterhouse, University of Huddersfield.
Set reading: The Journey Home and Other Stories (Persephone)
Saturday 25 October 2025
18.00-20.00 British Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Time
Morning/lunch time in the Americas
Prices
£32.00 full price
£27.00 students
£27.00 CAMcard holders
Valerie Waterhouse on Malachi Whitaker: Women and Social Class
Malachi Whitaker ‘is one of the great English short story writers,’ says Philip Hensher. Yet her work – much of it about Yorkshire’s working-class people – remains surprisingly little-known. The eighth of eleven children of a Bradford bookbinder, she left school aged 13 and went to work for her father, but between 1929 and 1949, she published five volumes of short stories and a memoir with Jonathan Cape. Reviews of her fiction were mostly glowing. ‘Were it not that the characters are taken from a very different world, I should be tempted to make a comparison with the stories of Katherine Mansfield,’ wrote Vita Sackville-West.
Yet, as Sackville-West suggests, Whitaker’s range extends far beyond the provincial and the prosaic. Her stories – particularly those about women – push against social convention, exploring little-discussed themes including abortion, inappropriate sexual behaviour, and infertility. Often viewed as a social realist, Whitaker’s style could be as daring as her content, moving from the fragmentary, to the episodic, to the surreal. Settings, too, expand far beyond Bradford – to Morecambe, London, Dorset, Paris and Bruges.
Using Whitaker’s stories about women as a prism, this lecture will consider how she employed diverse literary styles and settings to explore issues affecting working-class and upwardly mobile females – through childhood, singledom, wifedom, motherhood and old age. Whitaker regularly mined her own life for inspiration, and we shall see how her personal narrative and character emerge from the work.
Live online lecture and seminar with Valerie Waterhouse, University of Huddersfield.
Set reading: The Journey Home and Other Stories (Persephone)
Saturday 25 October 2025
18.00-20.00 British Time
19.00-21.00 Central European Time
Morning/lunch time in the Americas
Prices
£32.00 full price
£27.00 students
£27.00 CAMcard holders