David Storey, This Sporting Life

Nicolas Tredell (Independent Scholar - Europe)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kerry Myler (Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1960

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

This Sporting Life was the first published novel by David Storey and established him as a significant presence in postwar British fiction. It drew on his own experience of playing professional Rugby League football for his native city of Wakefield in Yorkshire. As Storey recalls in his posthumously published memoir, A Stinging Delight (2021), the title of the novel came from the lyric of a blues song he heard on the radio one evening, and noted down, while he was working on the manuscript: “this sportin’ life: you know, it’s gonna be the death o’ me. I think I might settle down” (Stinging, 248; this differs from the versions of the lyrics now available online, but the gist is the s…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

3738 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "This Sporting Life". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 29 November 2022 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=8295, accessed 26 November 2024.]

Save this article