Sillitoe, Alan (1928-2010), was a British author known for his realistic fiction about working-class life in English industrial towns. Many of his leading characters are angry young men rebelling against their dreary lives.
Sillitoe gained fame for his first novel, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), and his long story “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner” (1959). Both works were adapted into influential motion pictures, with Sillitoe writing the screenplays.
Sillitoe’s other novels include A Tree on Fire (1967), A Start in Life (1970), Life Goes On (1985), Leonard’s War (1991), The Broken Chariot (1998), Birthday (2002), and A Man of His Time (2004). Sillitoe also wrote many poems, some of which appear in Collected Poems (1993). Many of his short stories were published in New and Collected Stories (2003). His essays were collected in Mountains and Caverns (1975) and A Flight of Arrows (2003). Sillitoe also wrote stories for children, travel books, and plays. He wrote an autobiography, Life Without Armour (1995).
Sillitoe was born on March 4, 1928, in Nottingham, England, into a working-class family. He quit school at the age of 14. His experiences working in a bicycle factory inspired Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Sillitoe died on April 25, 2010.
