While England Sleeps was published by Viking in 1993. The novel follows Brian Botsford, an upper-middle-class aspiring writer in 1930s London, and his love affair with Edward Phelan, a working-class man employed on the Underground. When Brian, ashamed of the relationship, abandons Edward for a more socially acceptable life, Edward enlists in the International Brigades and goes to fight in Spain — and Brian must follow him to rescue him from the war.
The novel drew on the real experiences of Stephen Spender, whose autobiography World Within World (1951) describes a similar relationship with a working-class man named “Jimmy Younger” (Tony Hyndman). Spender — then eighty-four years old — sued for copyright infringement, claiming Leavitt had appropriated intimate details of his life. The case was settled out of court; Viking withdrew the first edition, and Leavitt revised the novel for republication.
The controversy overshadowed the novel’s literary merits, which are considerable. Leavitt captures the particular atmosphere of 1930s literary London — the political engagement, the class consciousness, the sexual hypocrisy — with precision and feeling. The relationship between Brian and Edward is rendered with the same emotional subtlety that characterizes all Leavitt’s work: the power dynamics of class, the shame of desire, and the destructive consequences of cowardice.
The Spender affair raised important questions about the relationship between fiction and life: what can a novelist legitimately take from a living person’s experience? Where does inspired-by become stolen-from?
Collecting While England Sleeps
First edition (Viking, New York, 1993): Cloth binding, dust jacket. (Withdrawn edition — scarce.)
Market values:
- First edition (withdrawn), fine/fine: $80–$200
- Revised edition (Houghton Mifflin, 1995): $10–$25