These Poor Hands

By University of Wales Press

These Poor Hands: The Autobiography of a Miner Working in South Wales', was first published in June 1939. It was an instant bestseller, and its fame catapulted its author into the front rank of 'proletarian writers'. B. L. Coombes, an English-born migrant, had lived in the Vale of Neath since before the First World War, but only turned to writing in the 1930s as a way of communicating the plight of the miners and their communities to the wider world. "These Poor Hands" presents, in a documentary style, the working life of the miner as well as the author's experiences in the lock-outs of 1921 and 1926. It demonstrates Coombes' desire to offer an accurate account of the lives of miners and their families, and carries a sincere moral charge in its description of the waste of human potential that is industrial capitalism in decline. Long out of print, "These Poor Hands" has been recognised for over sixty years as the classic miner's autobiography.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Release date: Apr 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9781783160853

Reviews for These Poor Hands

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I don't think I can quite say I liked reading this: it's an autobiography of a miner who worked in various mines for most of his life. While parts of it are fictionalised slightly to avoid libel and so on, and there isn't much of Bert Coombes as a person in it, it's very informative about the conditions in the mines and the kind of men who worked there.

The title has been thought self-pitying, but I think it's perfect. In the introduction to The Valley, The City, The Village, by Glyn Jones, by Stevie Davies, he points out that 'hands' has many meanings, that the miners themselves are referred to as 'hands'. They were referred to by the use they were put to, as so many pairs of hands rather than as people. Coombes' title for his work takes on so many meanings then... his own hands, no doubt cut and bruised and twisted by his work; the likewise mistreated hands of those he refers to; the miners as a whole; their poverty...

You get the idea.