Tales Of A Lifer

Based on an essay published in the London Magazine, one of a series the author has done on working-class writers. This gives some account of the work of Irish-born novelist, short-story writer and 'Man of the Road', Jim Phelan. Phelan was able to draw on a broad range of experiences: as a merchant seaman, blacksmith, serving as a prison inmate (he was convicted of murder doing the commission of an armed robbery),but he would record his vocation as that of a tramp. Lester's examines his remarkable creative output after his release from prison in 1937, evidenced in nearly two dozen books, with themes including the life of a prison inmate; the intrigues of the small fry involved in Irish nationalist politics, the contending values of tramp and working man; the tramping culture and characters he encountered in his life on the road.