Sillitoe, Alan (1928– )

English novelist. One of the Angry Young Men of the 1950s, he wrote Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958), about a working-class man in Nottingham; the character, Arthur Seaton, returned in Birthday (2001). The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is the title story of a collection of short stories published in 1959.

Born in Nottingham, Sillitoe travelled in France, Spain, and Italy between 1952 and 1958. He published several collections of verse, including Rats and Other Poems (1960), Sun Before Departure: Poems 1974 to 1982 (1984), and Selected Poems (1993), but is most widely acclaimed for his novels and stories about working-class life.

His later novels deal with characters from other sections of society, but always view the plight of individuals trapped in a stifling social environment, including A Start in Life (1970), Raw Material (1972, fictionalized memoirs), Key to the Door (1961), The Flame of Life (1974), Last Loves (1990), and The German Numbers Woman (1999). Collected Stories was published in 1995, and New and Collected Stories, a selection of his short stories written mostly 1959–81, in 2003. Life Without Armour (1995) is an early autobiography.