The Folks That Live on the Hill - Introduction - Henry Hitchings

Sep 27, 2026

Uploaded by jayni

Kingsley Amis’s The Folks That Live on the Hill is introduced and contextualized through Henry Hitchings’s account of Amis’s literary career and cultural role. The text situates the novel in 1990, linking it to Amis’s public recognition, his shift toward domineering late-life candidness, and his critical stance against humbug. It frames the book as Amis’s twentieth novel and part of a late creative run, highlighting its comic realism and relative warmth toward “kindness” amid earlier satire.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryStory & Novel

FormatPDF

Pages181

Reading Time4 h 39 min

AccessFree to download

Contents

Introduction by Henry Hitchings

The Folks That Live on the Hill

KINGSLEY AMIS The Folks That Live on the Hill with an introduction by Henry Hitchings PENGUIN BOOKS Contents Introduction by Henry Hitchings THE FOLKS THAT LIVE ON THE HILL PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS THE FOLKS THAT LIVE ON THE HILL Kingsley Amis (1922–1995) was born in South London and educated at the City of London School and St John’s College, Oxford. He began his literary career as a poet but shot to fame on the publication of his first novel, Lucky Jim, in 1954. He wrote over twenty novels, including That Uncertain Feeling, One Fat Englishman, The Green Man and Stanley and the Women. He was nominated for the Booker Prize for Ending Up (1974) and again for Jake s’ Thing (1978), and he won it for The Old Devils in 1986. Amis also published six volumes of poetry and many works of nonfiction, including his Memoirs (1991) . He wrote widely on science fiction, politics, education, language, films, television, eating and drinking. He was appointed CBE in 1981 and was knighted in 1990. Henry Hitchings is the author of Dr Johnson s’ Dictionary (2005), The Secret Life of Words (2008) and The Language Wars (2011) . He has received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, a Somerset Maugham Award and the Modern Language Association’s award for the best work by an independent scholar, as well as being shortlisted in 2009 for the title of Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. He lives in London and is the theatre critic for the Evening Standard. To Peter Quennell Introduction The Folks That Live on the Hill was published in 1990, a busy year for Kingsley Amis. He was knighted in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, and travelled to the investiture at Buckingham Palace with his friends Geoff and Mavis Nicholson but without his formal invitation– gaining entry thanks toa guard who recognized Mavis from her television appearances. In a letter to the poet Gavin Ewart, who wrote to congratulate him, he expressed what he called an ‘unworthy thought’ – ‘I was afraid Spike Milligan would score at the same time ’.1 Amis was candid about his capacity for unworthy thoughts, and as he moved from middle age into a domineering kind of senescence, he increasingly made a point of exhibiting them. This is conspicuous in his Memoirs, written side by side with The Folks That Live on the Hill. A compendium of startlingly unaffectionate reminiscences, its publication in 1991 provoked some stinging responses. The spirit in which Amis composed the book is suggested by a letter to Robert Conquest, his friend of almost forty years, in which he reflected that it had been ‘[v.g. fun](v.g. fun)’ and had involved ‘pissing’ on an assortment of literary grandees.2 Conquest was one of many who in due course had the shock of being caught in the deluge. Another landmark for Amis in 1990 was the publication of a selection of his non-fiction. Entitled The Amis Collection, this album of shortish pieces reinforced the impression that Amis ’s dominant mode as a critic and cultural observer was one of waspish opposition– a desire to expose humbug and burst the bubbles of reputation. Meanwhile, Amis ’s own standing was coming under increasing scrutiny, not least in the kind of lumpen academic studies he was wont to despise. That autumn he tried to bat away the efforts of Dale Salwak, an American scholar and acclaimed magician, who had for some time been researching a biography of him. Salwak sent three chapters of his work-in-progress; Amis declared them‘altogether unsatisfactory’ and ofa standard ‘so low as not to earn a place on any serious publisher ’slist’.3 (In the finished volume, published two years later, Salwak would thank Amis for treating him‘with the utmost generosity’.4) The very existence of such a work was a reflection of Amis ’s induction into the canon of modern literature. Likened by admirers to Evelyn Waugh and P. G. Wodehouse, he was seen as part ofa tradition of ‘serious ’ comic writing that embraced Henry Fielding, H. G. Wellsand G. K. Che

FAQs

When was The Folks That Live on the Hill published, and why is that year significant in the introduction?

The introduction states that The Folks That Live on the Hill was published in 1990, highlighting a busy period for Amis, including his knighthood and related public events.

How does the introduction describe Kingsley Amis’s evolution in tone and outlook by the time of this novel?

It describes Amis as moving from irreverent early prominence into a more vituperative conservatism, while still retaining a dark scepticism that includes restrained tenderness.

What does the introduction suggest about the novel’s relationship to “kindness” and Amis’s earlier satire?

It reports that Amis’s son Martin says the novel is “very broadly about kindness,” and contrasts this generosity with the possibility that benevolence might previously have been satirized by Amis.

Sep 27, 2026

Uploaded by jayni