MIDDLETON, Stanley 1919–

PERSONAL:

Born August 1, 1919, in Nottinghamshire, England; son of Thomas (a railway worker) and Elizabeth Ann Middleton; married Margaret Shirley Welch, December 22, 1951; children: Penelope Jane, Sarah Ursula Judith. Education: Writer and educator. University College, Nottingham (now University of Nottingham), B.A., 1940, M.Ed., 1952. Politics: Labour. Religion: Christian. Hobbies and other interests: "Music, walking, the theatre (mildly)."

ADDRESSES:

Home—Sherwood, Nottinghamshire, England.

CAREER:

High Pavement College, Nottinghamshire, England, head of department of English, 1958-81; Cambridge University, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, England, Judith E. Wilson visiting fellow, 1982-83. Military service: Royal Artillery and Army Education Corps of British Army, 1940-46; became warrant officer.

MEMBER:

PEN, Writers Guild.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Booker McConnell Prize for Fiction (shared with Nadine Gordimer), National Book League, 1974, for Holiday; M.A., University of Nottingham, 1975; Honorary M.Univ., Open University, 1995; Honorary D.Litt, De Montfort University and Nottingham Trent University, both 1998.

WRITINGS:

novels

A Short Answer, Hutchinson (London, England), 1958.

Harris's Requiem, Hutchinson (London, England), 1960.

A Serious Woman, Hutchinson (London, England), 1961.

The Just Exchange, Hutchinson (London, England), 1962.

Two's Company, Hutchinson (London, England), 1963.

Him They Compelled, Hutchinson (London, England), 1964.

Terms of Reference, Hutchinson (London, England), 1966.

The Golden Evening, Hutchinson (London, England), 1968.

Wages of Virtue, Hutchinson (London, England), 1969.

Apple of the Eye, Hutchinson (London, England), 1970.

Brazen Prison, Hutchinson (London, England), 1971.

Cold Gradations, Hutchinson (London, England), 1972.

A Man Made of Smoke, Hutchinson (London, England), 1973.

Holiday, Hutchinson (London, England), 1974.

Distractions, Hutchinson (London, England), 1975.

Still Waters, Hutchinson (London, England), 1976.

Ends and Means, Hutchinson (London, England), 1977.

Two Brothers, Hutchinson (London, England), 1978.

In a Strange Land, Hutchinson (London, England), 1979.

The Other Side, Hutchinson (London, England), 1980.

Blind Understanding, Hutchinson (London, England), 1982.

Entry into Jerusalem, Hutchinson (London, England), 1983, New Amsterdam (New York, NY), 1989.

The Daysman, Hutchinson (London, England), 1984.

Valley of Decision, Hutchinson (London, England), 1985, New Amsterdam, 1987.

An After-Dinner's Sleep, Hutchinson (London, England), 1986.

After a Fashion, Hutchinson (London, England), 1987.

Recovery, Hutchinson (London, England), 1988.

Vacant Places, Hutchinson (London, England), 1989, New Amsterdam, 1990.

Changes and Chances, Hutchinson (London, England), 1990.

Beginning to End, Hutchinson (London, England), 1991.

A Place to Stand, Hutchinson (London, England), 1992.

Married Past Redemption, Hutchinson (London, England), 1993.

Toward the Sea, Hutchinson (London, England), 1995.

Live and Learn, Hutchinson (London, England), 1996.

Brief Hours, Hutchinson (London, England), 1997.

Against the Dark, Hutchinson (London, England), 1998.

Small Change, Hutchinson (London, England), 2000.

Love in the Provinces, Hutchinson (London, England), 2002.

Sterner Stuff, Hutchinson (London, England), 2005.

Brief Garlands, Charnwood (Leicestershire, England), 2005.

radio plays

The Captain from Nowhere, 1972.

Harris's Requiem, 1972.

A Little Music at Night, 1972.

Cold Graduations (adapted from Middleton's novel), 1973.

other

Contributor to periodicals, including Critical Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS:

Stanley Middleton is a prolific novelist who is particularly attuned to lower-middle-class family relationships in England's Midlands. According to June Sturrock, in her Dictionary of Literary Biography entry on Middleton, the novelist "deliberately avoids the metropolitan, the modish, the elegant, in favor of a sparse and perceptive realist treatment of provincial life, a sharp and unsentimental view of ordinary people." Sturrock also observed that Middleton, cowinner of the Booker McConnell prize for his novel Holiday in 1974, "has won respect for the careful accuracy of his dialogue and use of detail, his refusal to comfort or to glamorize, and, above all, his concern with human pain and failure," noted Sturrock.

One motif in Middleton's novels is the crisis relationship, particularly the relationship founded solely on sexual attraction or the relationship marred by marital infidelity or lack of communication. Sturrock noted that "many, perhaps most, of the relationships between men and women in [Middleton's] novels are incomprehensible except as sexual attraction." The relationship between the suburbanite David and the working-class Gladys in Two's Company, for example, "is at best sterile and at worst destructive, apart from the physical pleasure they give each other," stated Sturrock. David, having inherited all the snobbishness of his prospering parents, at one point goes so far as punching Gladys in the face. "It is rare in Middleton's novels," observed Sturrock, "to find a man and a woman enjoying each other both physically and otherwise. Sexual love is treated as a bond between otherwise incompatible elements."

The Other Side exhibits a crisis relationship in the form of marital infidelity, although, as viewed by Judy Cooke in the New Statesman, "Middleton takes a stock situation … and turns it on its head." David Watson informs his wife, Elizabeth, that he is leaving her for another woman. Three days later, however, he has changed his mind and announces his decision to stay. This reversal on David's part occurs at the novel's beginning, and what follows is a long-term effort at marital reconstruction.

Beyond the scope of male-female relationships, Middleton's novels center on the family: its births, its deaths—figurative as well as literal—its miscommunications, its disasters. In The Golden Evening, according to Sturrock, "we are shown the counterpoint within the family of the stress of love and the stress of death." Mrs. Allsop is dying, while at the same time her son and daughter are discovering love. Middleton contrasts the end of the parents' relationship, when Mrs. Allsop dies, with the onset of the son's marriage. Another Middleton book, Ends and Means, presents the Chamberlain family trying to survive an onslaught of tragedy: adultery by the novelist father, a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide by the son, and a successful suicide by the father's mistress.

The writer-protagonist also appears in Ends and Means, where novelist Eric Chamberlain's lust for success nearly blinds him to the unhappiness of both his lover and his son, each of whom resorts to suicide. In Entry in Jerusalem, meanwhile, it is another pictorial artist, painter John Worth, who remains aloof from surrounding people and events. Even the emotional breakdown and suicide of a former peer fails to significantly effect the single-minded Worth's approach to living and, implicitly, painting.

Middleton deals more directly with the actual role of art in his novel Two Brothers. The conflict in their lives is that Kathleen, whom Francis loved and proposed marriage to, married Jack. Midway through the novel Francis dies, causing relationships to alter when Kathleen discovers Francis has written poetry in which she figures centrally. In Sturrock's assessment, "seeing in Francis's posthumous … papers how parts of their lives are framed, shifted into significance by art, seems to help Kathleen understand her husband and place the same value on the papers that Francis had given them by the sharp focus of his words."

The redemptive value of art figures into Middleton's In a Strange Land as well. In this novel, a brilliant musician, James Murren, begins a teaching career in the English Midlands, where he feels isolated "in a strange land." Though he never belongs to this new society, and while the woman he loves realizes she can never quite enter his world, Murren gives some meaning to the final days of a dying Polish emigre with his music.

Educators are also prominent in Middleton's novels. Painter John Worth, the protagonist of Entry in Jerusalem, has worked as a teacher, while Job Turner, the hero of Recovery, has long served as a headmaster. While Turner has not yet come to terms with his impending retirement, Alaistair Murray, the hero of An After-Dinner's Sleep, has recently ended his career as an education director, and he works to maintain a constructive existence while conducting a relationship with a long-ago friend. Still another academic, Joe Harrington of After a Fashion, observes the intellectual decline of both an aging fellow professor and a neighbor's parent.

Less typical of Middleton's protagonists is Adrian Millier in Changes and Chances. In this novel, the wealthy Millier, whose artistic aspirations exceed his creativity and his skill, maintains a vigorous, but scarcely profound, physical intimacy with his housekeeper. Conduct warranting apparently greater admiration is shown by a true artist, the poet Stephen Youlgrave, and by a helpful child, Peter Fowler, whom Shirley Toulson, writing in Contemporary Novelists, described as "astutely observant." Toulson added that in Changes and Chances, as in other novels by Middleton, "the disciplines of music and poetry provide solace for the challenges of loneliness and the passage of time."

Middleton's novel Brief Garlands is a "slice-of-life [that] quietly chronicles the ways domestic lives are roiled by unexpected changes and losses that challenge a retired couple's good intentions," noted a Kirkus Reviews critic. John Stone is the retired headmaster of a school, who lives with his wife, Peg, in the English midlands. They are well-known and active in their community, and neighbors Annie and Harry Fisher have a house just like theirs. As the story unfolds, the Stones and their neighbors are shown to have strong emotions and hidden secrets tucked just beneath the surface of their cozy suburban existence. John has been carrying on a low-key but consistent affair with Annie Fisher for years, and when Peg is away on a trip to Scotland, Annie confides to John that she has found a lump in her breast and has to undergo medical tests to see if it is cancer. Later, John and Pet help May withstand the advances of a too-eager suitor; Harry Fisher is questioned by the police when a women he was involved with is murdered, but he dies suddenly, leaving Annie in emotional turmoil; and the retirees see the quality and timbre of their cherished neighborhood begin to decline when a car is stolen and set ablaze on their street. Peg's sister and nephew experience some romantic difficulties, and helping them is a brief respite for Peg and John, but they can never escape the bittersweet realization that their lives, however complicated or sedate, are irreversibly in their autumn years. Booklist reviewer Margaret Flanagan concluded that Middleton's "quietly powerful novel" will have great appeal for "those who prefer understated characterizations and subtle nuances to action and adventure."

As with Brief Garlands, many of Middleton's works deal with both the good and ill effects of aging. In Middleton's stories, "it is not the plot as such that is of interest but the observation of the relationships of the characters and the changes in self-awareness that these reflexively produce," observed Mike Hepworth in Generations. "Middleton's familiarity with the negative aspects of later life-debilitating illness, cancer, dementia, and the loss of the self-does not therefore result in a neglect of its positive qualities," Hepworth noted. Ultimately, Hepworth concluded: "The essence of Middleton's positive and encouraging response is acceptance and appreciation of the subtle interweaving of positive and negative experiences that accompany chronological aging."

Middleton told CA: "I write religiously five days a week in the morning. I write with a fountain pen into a hard-backed notebook. This has its disadvantages in that it is not easy to make alterations. I therefore have to try to get it right the first time. I alter my written text as I read it, sometimes in large sections, always the past day's work just before I write. I then correct this complete handwritten text before I send it to the typist, correct and deliver the manuscript to the publisher, and when he sends a proof here, I again correct that. On rereading I sometimes find that I have said something that surprises even me. As I am thinking about my next day's writing all the time, this seems odd to me. I write rather slowly and manage about 500 words a sitting.

"My favorite book varies. I think the books that deal with musical composers are the ones which excite or satisfy me the most. I sometimes think that, if I had any real choice in the matter, I'd have been a composer. I wasn't, alas, good enough. One thing that surprises me is how little interest critics show in, or appear to know about, music. On this ground I'd probably choose Harris's Requiem (my second published book, 1960, and the one which Nottingham Trent University is bringing out in an annotated edition). The second I'd choose might well be Valley of Decision. Both have musical subjects and protagonists."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Volume 23, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 7, 1977, Volume 38, 1986.

Belbin, David and John Lucas, editors, Stanley Middleton at Eighty, Five Leaves Publications (Nottingham, England), 1999.

Contemporary Novelists, 6th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 14: British Novelists since 1960, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1983.

Middleton, Stanley, Ends and Means, Hutchinson, 1977.

Middleton, Stanley, The Other Side, Hutchinson, 1980.

periodicals

Booklist, October 15, 2004, Margaret Flanagan, review of Brief Garlands, p. 390.

Generations, fall, 2003, Mike Hepworth, "Fiction and Social Gerontology: The Novelist Stanley Middleton on Aging," p. 84.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2004, review of Brief Garlands, p. 887.

Times Literary Supplement, April 16, 1993, Nicholas Wroe, review of Married Past Redemption, p. 21; May 12, 1995, Brian Martin, review of Toward the Sea, p. 20.