“I thought the drawing was a skeleton touching a poo,” said Jack Chadwick about the cover of Jack Hilton’s 1934 book Caliban Shrieks – one praised at the time by the likes of George Orwell and WH Auden.
Chadwick, then a 27-year-old bartender, was browsing the Salford Working Class Movement Library in 2021 and came across the book by chance. Intrigued by the cover and then the story, he spent months trying to track down traces of the late Hilton.
After some chance encounters, posters in pubs, custard tarts, and a BBC Radio 4 interview, he has rescued the working-class literary tome and is getting it republished by Penguin.
Chadwick was instantly gripped by Hilton’s life, and found the whole process of learning about the writer rewarding. Hilton was a plasterer from Rochdale who based the book on his own experiences as a working-class man. Caliban Shrieks explores his journey as a labourer and his relationship with societal structures on a larger scale.
“His life is so fast-paced, chaotic, and sad, also funny and brilliant,” explained Chadwick. “By the time you finish the book you realise this was published in 1934, so he was 34 when it came out.
“When you finish it, you’re like: ‘What happened next?’ You have to know. It’s such a unique way of telling his life up until that point – and his life up to that point was so unique and weird, when you finish you have to know what possibly could have befallen this bizarre man.”
Little record exists of Hilton’s later life, as he did not have much family left alive. It is believed he exited writing within 15 years of starting, but the exact reason remains unknown.
Initially Hilton was thought to have died in Wiltshire, but Chadwick traced death certificates and oral retellings of Hilton’s life from friends and acquaintances – and discovered he died of an overdose in Oldham.
Luck and chance encounters helped Chadwick find the publishing rights to the book. Through the remainder of 2021, in between shifts working in nightclubs and bars, Chadwick was hanging up posters on streets and in pubs around the Oldham and Rochdale area. While having a pint and chat with a bartender and elderly regular at The Sportsman’s Arms in Oldham, he was made aware of Mary Hassall – wife of Brian, one of Hilton’s closest friends.
He was given her address: “I went straight after the pub to knock, and there was no response at the door and no car on the driveway. It looked pretty empty and it was getting dark and cold. I had a pen and paper, so I left a note.”
Chadwick admitted it was “three big flukes” that led him to finding her – having a pen to hand, the elderly regular happening to be at the pub that day, and Mary Hassall still living in that house.
“[Mary] moved a week later from that address I was given, so if I’d been a little bit later with that letter, there’s a good chance it would’ve been lost in a huge pile of takeaway leaflets,” he explained.
“It was very good luck that I came when I did. The biro was also a complete fluke – because I never carried a pen with me before. Since then I’ve always got a pen and paper on me, even going to the toilet.”
After meeting Mary and sharing custard tarts, Chadwick learned more about Hilton’s story and life. Mary signed the rights, which had been left to her in Hilton’s will, to Chadwick under the condition that he spread the word about the Oldham working man.
With that, Chadwick spearheaded a campaign to get the book back into print – writing an essay for the Manchester Mill and discussing the author on BBC Radio 4. It was on Radio 4 where Nick Skidmore, the publishing director of Penguin’s Vintage Classics, heard the tale. The book has now been signed by Vintage, an imprint of Penguin, the UK’s largest publishing house.
A renewed “awareness of the north from London-based media” has made this feat of publication possible, according to Chadwick. “I think if this had all happened 10 years ago, I think it would’ve been much harder. If it had happened 20 years ago – impossible,” he said.
“I think politically there’s a certain thing that’s happened in the last few years since Brexit, since the 2019 general election, and just in an effect of what’s happened in the country in the north and the south – there’s an awareness of the division. Even with having regional figures like Andy Burnham, [it’s] raised awareness of northern issues.”
He also never imagined the book would reach a publishing house such as Penguin books. “I thought maybe the best case scenario was maybe a niche publisher or maybe we could raise some money for it to be self-published,” he said.
“Getting a small indie press to put out even a few hundred copies would’ve been amazing, but Penguin I couldn’t imagine.”
Above all, he commends the personal writing style of Hilton – noting that his deep vulnerability and honesty was what drew him to the works originally. He hopes new readers will think the same.
He said: “I read it and heard him in my grandfather’s voice when I was reading him … the personal way he addresses things is how I think people prefer to think about everything, because it’s more accessible than academic far-removed, ivory-tower stuff.”
Caliban Shrieks by Jack Hilton is published by Vintage (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
