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These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales
by
Chris Williams
,
B.L. Coombes
,
Bill Jones
First published in 1939,
These Poor Hands
was an instant best-seller, catapulting its author, B. L. Coombes, to the front rank of proletarian writers. Coombes was born in England, but he lived for decades in the Vale of Neath in south Wales, and as the economic problems of the 1930s deepened, he turned to writing as a way to spread the word about the plight of miners and t
...more
Paperback
,
207 pages
Published
June 1st 2011
by University of Wales Press
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Community Reviews
(showing
1-16
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16)
I don't think I can quite say I
liked
reading this: it's an autobiography of a miner who worked in various mines for most of his life. While parts of it are fictionalised slightly to avoid libel and so on, and there isn't much of Bert Coombes as a person in it, it's very informative about the conditions in the mines and the kind of men who worked there.
The title has been thought self-pitying, but I think it's perfect. In the introduction to The Valley, The City, The Village, by Glyn Jones, by St ...more
The title has been thought self-pitying, but I think it's perfect. In the introduction to The Valley, The City, The Village, by Glyn Jones, by St ...more
Whilst this book doesn't cover Coombes' entire life, it wasn't written as such. As Williams explains in the introduction to this edition, Coombes wrote this book to show what life was like as a miner, from the conditions they worked in to the way they were treated by the landlords and coal masters. Coombes has an eloquent style of writing that lends itself well to describing life underground that shows it to be both highly rewarding and highly dangerous creating a close knit community of workers
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As an autobiography, it doesn't have a lot of information about the author's personal life. It focuses on his work as a miner and as such it does a good job. Apparently he has written other biographical memoirs that detail other parts of his life. He was a very intelligent man, not only a miner and a writer, but also worked with the ambulance association and learned the violin.
The book was informative and interesting. While I felt it could have gone into more depth in areas, maybe added the aut ...more
The book was informative and interesting. While I felt it could have gone into more depth in areas, maybe added the aut ...more
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