>>
>> Anyone familiar with the programme, 'Round Britain Quiz' on R4 will 
>> be forgiven for the slight familiarity of the following convoluted 
>> question. 'What is the connection between the following, Sherlock 
>> Holmes and the 'Molly Maquires', Elizabeth Barrett Browning, J.M. 
>> Turner, W.H. Auden and Tony Harrison's infamous poem 'V.'?
>>
>> The answer, as many will have realised, is coal-mining, or more 
>> particularly, the portrayal of coal mining in the arts and thus this 
>> intriguing book, Caverns of Night: Coal Mines in Art, Literature, and 
>> Film, should engage any mining historian whose interests lie beyond, 
>> 'who invented what widget, when and why', or 'who owned what mine, 
>> when'.
>>
>> In nineteen chapters the essayists pick over a veritable mine-scape 
>> of 19th and 20th century literature, poetry, film and the pictorial 
>> arts depicting coal mining in Western Europe and North America. 
>> Written by and presumably for those engaged in literary criticism and 
>> analysis (all the authors are associated with American universities 
>> departments of English or English literature) the essays range far 
>> and wide across the spectrum. A few titles will serve to illustrate 
>> the book's flavour, 'The Aesthetics of Coal'; 'Demonised Miners and 
>> Domineering Muses'; 'Old Hell Shaft' and 'The Rattlesnake's History', 
>> although they would, perhaps, tend to put off even the bravest mining 
>> historian from reading any further!
>>
>> However, persevere and a whole new world opens up- at least it did 
>> for this reviewer. For instance, it was surprising to learn just how 
>> much of the 19th century literature which encompasses the coal mining 
>> industry was 'based' on the 1842 Report of the Children's Employment 
>> Commission, principally as a means for authors to ensure the accuracy 
>> of her/his facts concerning the conditions of the mines and those 
>> employed in them. For example, see the essay, 'Social Reform Through 
>> Sensationalised Realism', subtitled, 'The Rattlesnake's History'.
>>
>> The poetic canon is not ignored and one, apparently, long forgotten 
>> poet, Thomas Llewelyn Thomas, wrote a long poem concerning the 
>> dreadful Hartley Colliery disaster of 1862. In addition to winning a 
>> prestigious poetry prize it was also read in the Sheldonian Theatre 
>> at Oxford University on the occasion of the 1863 graduation ceremony, 
>> which may have been preferable to the pageants offered at such 
>> ceremonies today! The poem vanished from sight following its last 
>> reprinting in 1898 to be reprinted in full in the present book.
>>
>> For this reviewer there are some flights of fancy, for instance, an 
>> analysis of the 1930s government inspired documentary films on the UK 
>> coal industry, coupled with Auden's well known depiction of 
>> industrial and mining landscapes, here the essayist is carried away 
>> with what he terms the 'homoerotics' of the genre, drawing particular 
>> attention to the semi-naked miners at their work! It would be 
>> interesting to read this essayist's thoughts on the famous 
>> documentary of the same period and genre on the subject of the GPO's 
>> night mail trains, all those uniforms!
>>
>> Whilst the emphasis is heavily skewed towards the written word the 
>> pictorial arts are not ignored, the cartoons of Sidney Sime, with his 
>> strange and weird inhabitants of the underground world was unknown to 
>> this reviewer. Whilst certainly kaleidoscopic in its sweep of 
>> coal-mining art it is by no means encyclopaedic- for instance, the 
>> work of the south Wales poet, Idris Davies, is somewhat surprisingly 
>> absent; however the book makes no claim to completeness. One author 
>> makes a rather questionable statement, that the Mining Journal was a, 
>> "working-class journal". The idea of the MJ being the miner's 
>> equivalent of, say, the Daily Mirror, or indeed the required reading 
>> of the average collier, as this statement appears to imply, stretches 
>> this reviewers incredulity too far!
>>
>> Finally, where do Tony Harrison and his poem, 'V.' fit into the book? 
>> Readers may know that he wrote it at the height of M. Thatcher's 
>> virulence and that it was set in a Leeds cemetery. The poem is 
>> 'about' the decay and alienation of the human spirit during that 
>> period and underneath the cemetery lies an abandoned coal mine, which 
>> is alluded to in the poem. And Sherlock Holmes and the 'Molly 
>> Maguires'? The latter were an alleged terrorist secret society 
>> hell-bent on undermining the management of the Pennsylvanian coal 
>> mines. Management hired a Pinkerton detective to hunt down the 
>> members of the society and circa 1875, in a subsequent trial, twenty 
>> men were hung for their alleged activities in the society. Early in 
>> the 20th century Pinkerton's son met Arthur Conan Doyle who was 
>> apparently fascinated by his account of the infiltration of the 
>> society and its downfall and Conan Doyle subsequently used it for the 
>> plot of his final novel, The Valley of Fear.
>>
>> Almost certainly not a book that will occupy the bookshelves of too 
>> many mining historian's, especially given its hefty price tag, it is 
>> certainly a book well worth reading. It also contains a good and 
>> useful bibliography and is well indexed.
>>
>> Caverns of Night; Coal Mines in Art, Literature, and Film. W.B. 
>> Thesing (ed); University of South Carolina Press, 2000. 281pp: £38 >> HB.
>>
>> Peter Challis
>>
>> Thanks are due to Richard Bird for reading a draft of this review.
>>