Austen inspired me, says Welsh

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Telegraph
By Auslan Cramb, Scotland Correspondent


Irvine Welsh, the cult author of titles including Porno and Filth, has caused jaws to drop in literary circles by citing Jane Austen as a major influence on his work.

The author of Trainspotting, a story of drug addiction in Edinburgh, says his style owes as much to classical writers, including George Eliot and Sir Walter Scott, as it does to modern urban culture. The parallels between his depictions of drug addiction, petty crime and pornography, and the genteel and well-mannered world of Austen are not immediately obvious.

However, one academic said yesterday that both wrote faithfully about the world with which they were familiar - even if the prose styles had little in common.

Pride and Prejudice famously opens with the line "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife", while Transpotting starts with the slightly grittier "The sweat wis lashing oafay Sick Boy; he wis trembling". Austen's most famous characters are Mr Darcy, Mr Wickham and Elizabeth Bennet, while Welsh has given to English literature Renton, Sick Boy, Begbie and Spud.

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