Get Jack Hilton a blue plaque

Jack Hilton was a working-class writer, one of the greatest writers to ever come out of Greater Manchester. Despite critical acclaim, he was forgotten: expelled from memory by the snobbery of literary gatekeepers in London.

He first put pen to paper during the Great Depression, during which he was attacked and even imprisoned for his socialist politics. And after the failure of his writing career he went on to become a founding member of the Plasterers' Union in Rochdale (a forerunner of Unite).

For eighty years, much of his brilliant writing was lost in dusty attics - this has now changed, and he is on the brink of finally winning the recognition he was denied. The success of this Gofundme so far has got us this far, gaining Jack a second hearing with publishers looking to bring him back into print.

But we could do more - working with Rochdale councillors, this campaign is looking to secure funding to erect a blue plaque in honour of Jack, and to put on an exhibition in the town to give working-class people in Greater Manchester an icon whose memory demonstrates the power of working-class creativity.

Read and listen about the project so far:

1. The Manchester Mill : 'He Captured the Imagination of Orwell and Auden - Then He Disappeared from View'

2. The i News : 'George Orwell loved the work of forgotten author Jack Hilton. Now a Manchester bartender has revived it'

3. Times Radio : Interview with Libby Purves

"Hilton was a terrific, provocative, phenomenally surprising writer - a true iconoclast. His loss from literature is a tragedy ... He could have been up there with Orwell, with D.H. Lawrence." - Dr. Ian Patterson, Poet and Fellow, Queens' College Cambridge

"This is explosive isn’t it? Jack Hilton was somebody in a really hard life, a really deprived life, and yet he’s able to look around it, and see something bigger, and see where it fits into something bigger — and disgraceful.” - Libby Purves, Times Radio

"Hilton writes with a powerful "Moby-Dick" rhetoric." - W.H. Auden

"What a considerable literary gift must have gone into the making of Mr Hilton’s book." - George Orwell