Moleskin Joeorder this book
Patric MacGill
Price £30.00

First published in 1923, Moleskin Joe is a sequel to Patrick MacGill's two earlier autobiographical novels, Children of the Dead End and The Rat Pit. Moleskin Joe is one of the central characters in the first two books - with his philosophy of "there's a good time comm', though we may never live to see it" - and the focus of the present volume is the story of his love affair with a young Irish woman met "on the road". The story is placed in the context of the life of the navvy at the beginning of the century, and MacGill writes about this with his usual flair, the people of the novels becoming individual characters with a permanent place in the history of working class literature.

From Chapter 1, "Moleskin Joe":

"His career from the age of twenty, though varied, had in it many recurrent episodes. When working he wrought hard, never at so much the hour, but so much the task. 'Not by the time, but by the piece,' was his motto. Change was the breath of life to the man and all transitions in space were performed on Shank's Mare. To-day he worked on a new railway in the South of England, next week he blasted slag in the Scottish Highlands. He slept easily out of doors in the summer, the lee of a hedge his shelter, a stone his pillow, the moon his lamp.