Walter Greenwood's 'Love on the Dole'

Love on the Dole (1933) is the best-remembered novel about the unemployed during the Depression, and has never been out of print. Its working-class author, Walter Greenwood, went overnight from being unemployed in Salford to being a best-selling writer. The novel’s impact was increased by a play adaptation in 1935, and Greenwood proposed a film adaption in 1936, but the British Board of Film Censors pronounced the story too ‘sordid’ and depressing’ to be fit for British cinema audiences. The film had to wait until 1940 when the Ministry of Information allowed this story of pre-war economic and social failure to be filmed. Reviewers of all political persuasions regarded the film as one of the best British wartime productions – and all three versions of Love on the Dole were referred to frequently during wartime debate about how a reconstructed post-war society should make a repetition of the nineteen thirties impossible. This is the first book-length study of this important work. It explores in detail what made the novel so influential among thirties and forties readers, analyses the considerable differences between the novel, play and film versions and puts the public response to Love on the Dole back into its full historical context. The book also discusses for the first time Greenwood’s whole literary career and his continuing success until the nineteen sixties: he wrote a further ten novels as well as plays and non-fiction works, few of which have received recent critical attention.