James Prior #NottsWriters

 To celebrate the May 5th launch of Follow the Moon and Stars here's a new series on #NottsWriters: 

James Prior (1851–1922)

It was on Mapperley Road near the centre of Nottingham that Prior was born. By the age of twenty-seven he had little to show for his literary efforts so he took a teaching position at a boarding school.

After his father died, he became involved with his uncle in a farming business but the money dried up. As it turned out, this would not be a wasted five years, as the experience would inform Prior’s novel Forest Folk (1901). By this time Prior was fifty years old.

After marrying his cousin Lily Kirk, Prior returned to Nottingham, living in Radcliffe-on-Trent before heading to Bingham, and it was here that all of his best work was written. He lived in Bingham from 1891 to 1922, first at 19 Fisher Lane, a home called Lushai Cottage (previously named Brusty Cottage), then at the neighbouring Banks, at Banks Cottage.

Prior would go for a ramble and bring home a quaint saying or even a new chapter, though much of his time in Bingham was spent as a social recluse.

James Prior has been called the ‘Thomas Hardy of Nottinghamshire’ and comparisons can even be made to DH Lawrence, who shared a publisher with Prior and rated, if pitied, the author. Lawrence wrote, ‘What a curious man James Prior is!’ and wondered why Prior was a ‘failure.’

His first published novel, Renie, was followed in 1897 by Ripple and Flood.

Ripple and Flood, is a story of his beloved river, the “smug and silver Trent”.

‘My prime consolation was neither book nor friend, but what entered my eye. What has once entered thereby remains, I am convinced, locked in my memory but the key hangs out of my reach.’

Then came Forest Folk, set during an eventful period of history that covers the Napoleonic Wars and Luddite riots. It’s about the farming community near Sherwood Forest.

Forest Folk was republished in 2017 by Nottingham’s Spokesman Books.

The all-important follow-up to this success was the disappointing Hyssop. 

Arguably his best book, A Walking Gentleman, arrived three years later. It’s the story of a gentleman who decamped on the eve of his wedding, making escape from the “madding crowd” and encountering many strange adventures on the way.

“Do yer want to faight or don’t yer?”

“I leave the choice to you.”

“Damn yer mealy mouth! Do yer or don’t yer?”

“Well, I don’t.”

“Then I’ll faight yer for not wantin’.”

From A Walking Gentemen

Prior’s last published work was Fortuna Chance (1910), set in the 1720s. 

The author was granted a small pension in recognition of his services to literature.

Writing of Fortuna Chance, the great John Buchan said, 

“I do not think there is such a master of the English countryside. His peasants seem to me quite as good as Mr Hardy’s and he has the astonishing power of producing impressions of scene and weather. Further he is a true artist in the construction of his stories and they provide moments of finer drama than almost any modern novelist.”

Don Pedro the Cruel was his other published work. He left unpublished manuscripts, November, Loose-Strife and Ware Aegir (a play).

His collected poetry did make a slim volume, published in 1925, and Bromley House Library has a copy. The collection includes two beautifully tender poems written when his wife Lily died.

Prior himself died in his small Bingham cottage in 1922. He was buried in Bingham’s cemetery. His headstone reads:

In loving memory of James Prior Kirk better known as James Prior

Died Dec 19th 1922 aged 71

Also his wife Lily, died Mar 9th 1914 aged 48

Also of their sons, Walter, died of wounds in France,

Aug 17th 1918 aged 26,

and Harold, died Apr 25th 1931 aged 23