Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

46 WOOLFIAN BOUNDARIES
Allen has described Hampson’s American-inspired, pared down style as “appear[ing] at fi rst
harsh, even crude” (Tradition 226) and William Plomer has characterized this fi rst novel as
“very English” in fl avor, sober and direct, marked by a “deep and unsentimental tenderness”
(xi). Trekkie Ritchie, later Trekkie Parsons, designed the cover for Saturday Night at the Greyhound
and the Woolfs highlighted the regional quality of the work in their marketing of it as
“a story of village life [showing] Hampson’s powers of story telling and character drawing.”
Th e book was praised for its simplicity, dramatic realism, and truth.
Hampson’s novel worked well with the Woolfs’ mandate at the press which was to
launch new authors and to publish work that would not fi nd a home with a mainstream
publishing house (Saturday Night at the Greyhound had been rejected by Jonathan Cape in
Figure 2. Trekkie Ritchie, dust jacket for Saturday Night at the Greyhound, 1931
1929). Th e Hogarth Press was in a position to take risks in 1931 with close to their highest
ever yearly profi t in 1930, a success repeated in 1931 before profi ts declined in 1932
(Willis Appendix B). Certainly the support of Hogarth Press author William Plomer and
also the presence at the press between 1931 and 1932 of John Lehmann, recently called
“the most successful supporter of working-class writing” in the 1930s, would have been
factors in the Woolfs’ decision to continue working with Hampson, as well as perhaps a
factor in their discontinuing their relationship with him (Hilliard 130). 5
Another factor in the Woolfs’ support of Hampson at a time when they were becoming
increasingly professionalized might have been that other publishing houses were actively
seeking working-class fi ction at the time. 6 Virginia Woolf made much of Hampson’s
putative working-class status, celebrating him as “Our Cardiff waiter” in a letter to Clive
Bell (L4 292) and describing him as “ravaged, exhausted, has been a bootboy, a waiter, also