Mining Writing', an essay & Jam Eater, a novel

This thesis comprises two parts. The first part is an essay, ‘Mining Writing’, which explores, through variously intertwined forms of research, the unique history and literature of the West Cumbrian coalfields, a geographically peripheral and culturally out-of-step region of Great Britain, which is also the South African author’s paternal and ancestral home. The essay contrasts the local experience of coal mining with its national mythos and representation, especially pertaining to the running down of the British coal industry in the 1980s, and in doing so brings a more textured reading of local, social and industrial history to the fore. In addition ‘Mining Writing’ brings into critical conversation writing about West Cumbria – particularly by Charles Dickens, Paul Theroux and William Wordsworth – with writing by West Cumbrians, most notably the miner-poets John W. Skelly and David Cradduck. The essay also explores the area’s history of mining disasters, as well as their memorialisation through text and public ceremony. ‘Mining Writing’ thus contextually positions the second part of the thesis, a novel titled Jam Eater. Jam Eater intertwines the experiences and memories of a young man from Maryport, West Cumbria; a mineworker dealing not only with personal tragedy and an unloving home life, but also the looming loss of his job, all amid the febrile atmosphere of a coastal town in the height of summer.