--
by E.C. Large, 1939
Published by Hyphen Press. See
http://www.hyphenpress.co.uk
Ernest Charles Large (1902–76) was (in chronological order) an English industrial chemist, writer, and plant scientist, best known for his book 'The advance of the fungi' (1940): a magisterial history of plant diseases. His novels 'Sugar in the air' and 'Asleep in the afternoon' come from the period of the mid- to late 1930s when he had left his work in industry and was writing full-time. In 1940 he went back into salaried employment as a research scientist. A third novel, 'Dawn in Andromeda', was published in 1956.
'Asleep in the afternoon' is the novel that the ‘hero’ (ironically conceived) of 'Sugar in the air' then writes. The book has quite a complex structure: a novel about a device that can bring on sleep, the woman who becomes a missionary advocate for this sleep as a social palliative; and the story, told in parallel, of the writer and his wife and young family, living through the making and production of this novel.
