Arthur Morrison And The East End

This, the first critical biography of Arthur Morrison (1863-1945), presents his East End writing as the counter-myth to the cultural production of the East End in late-Victorian realism. Morrison’s works, particularly Tales of Mean Streets (1894) and A Child of the Jago (1896), are often discussed as epitomes of slum fictions of the 1890s as well as prime examples of nineteenth-century realism, but their complex contemporary reception reveals the intricate paradoxes involved in representing the turn-of-the-century city. Arthur Morrison and the East End examines how an understanding of the East End in the Victorian cultural imagination operates in Morrison’s own writing. Engaging with the contemporary vogue for slum fiction, Morrison redressed accounts written by outsiders, positioning himself as uniquely knowledgeable about a place considered unknowable. His work provides a vigorous challenge to the fictionalised East End created by his predecessors, whilst also paying homage to Charles Dickens, George Gissing, Walter Besant and Guy de Maupassant. Examining the London sites which Morrison lived in and wrote about, this book is an excursion not into the Victorian East End, but into the fictions constructed around it.

A Child of the Jago is an 1896 novel by Arthur Morrison.A bestseller in its time, [1] it recounts the brief life of Dicky Perrott, a child growing up in the "Old Jago", a fictionalisation of the Old Nichol, [2] a slum located between Shoreditch High Street and Bethnal Green Road in the East End of London. The late nineteenth century English novelist George Gissing, who read the novel on Christmas Day 1896, felt that it was "poor stuf

In 1896, author Arthur Morrison gained notoriety for his bleak and violent A Child of the Jago, a slum novel that captured the desperate struggle to survive among London’s poorest. When a reviewer accused Morrison of exaggerating the depravity of the neighborhood on which the Jago was based, he incited the era’s most contentious public debate about the purpose of realism and the responsibilities of the novelist. In his self-defense and in his wider body of work, Morrison demonstrated not only his investments as a formal artist, but also his awareness of social questions. As the first critical essay collection on Arthur Morrison and the East End, this book assesses Morrison’s contributions to late-Victorian culture, especially discourses around English working-class life. Chapters evaluate Morrison in the context of Victorian criminality, child welfare, disability, housing, professionalism, and slum photography. Morrison’s works are also reexamined in the light of writings by Sir Walter Besant, Clementina Black, Charles Booth, Charles Dickens, George Gissing, and Margaret Harkness. This volume features an introduction and 11 chapters by preeminent and emerging scholars of the East End. They employ a variety of critical methodologies, drawing on their respective expertise in literature, history, art history, sociology, and geography. Critical Essays on Arthur Morrison and the East End throws fresh new light on this innovative novelist of poverty and urban life.

This book, written in 1896, is set in a slum area of London known at that time as The Jago. Even by 19th-century standards, it was a horrible place and was in the process of being cleared when he wrote the book. So the area is real but the characters are not. In this way, Morrison was more of a realist than Charles Dickens, showing how the environment shaped the lives of the people living there.

Short stories of the East End: at one time the slimy underbelly of London. The stories vary in style: from the gritty, no-holds-barred tale of Lizerunt, to the light humor of That Brute Simmons. "The greater number of these stories and studies were first printed in The National Observer; the introduction, in a slightly different form, in Macmillan's Magazine; "That Brute Simmons" and "A Conversion" have been published in The Pall Mall Budget; and "The Red Cow Group" is new...". Arthur George Morrison (1 November 1863 - 4 December 1945) was an English writer and journalist known for his realistic novels and stories about working-class life in London's East End, and for his detective stories, featuring the detective Martin Hewitt. He also collected Japanese art and published several works on the subject. He left a large collection of paintings and other works of art to the British Museum after his death in 1945.Morrison's best known work of fiction is his novel A Child of the Jago (1896). Early life: Morrison was born in Poplar, in the East End of London, on 1 November 1863. His father George was an engine fitter at the London Docks. George died in 1871 of tuberculosis, leaving his wife Jane with three children including Arthur. Arthur spent his youth in the East End. In 1879 he began working as an office boy in the Architect's Department of the London School Board. He later remembered frequenting used bookstores in Whitechapel Road around this time. In 1880 Arthur's mother took over a shop in Grundy Street. Morrison published his first work, a humorous poem, in the magazine Cycling in 1880, and took up cycling and boxing. He continued to publish works in various cycling journals. Career: In 1885 Morrison published his first serious journalistic work in the newspaper The Globe. In 1886, after having worked his way up to the rank of a third-class clerk, he was appointed to a position at the People's Palace, in Mile End. In 1888 he was given reading privileges at the British Museum. In the same year he published a collection of thirteen sketches entitled Cockney Corner, describing life and conditions in several London districts including Soho, Whitechapel, and Bow Street. In 1889 he became an editor of the paper Palace Journal, reprinting some of his Cockney Corner sketches, and writing commentaries on books and other subjects including the life of London poor people. In 1890 he left this job and joined the editorial staff of The Globe and moved to lodgings in the Strand. In 1891 he published his first book The Shadows Around Us, a collection of supernatural stories. In October 1891 his short story A Street was published in Macmillan's Magazine. In 1892 he collaborated with illustrator J. A. Sheppard on a collection of animal sketches, one entitled My Neighbors' Dogs, for The Strand Magazine. Later that year he married Elizabeth Thatcher at Forest Gate. He befriended writer and editor William Ernest Henley around this time, publishing stories of working-class life in Henley's National Observer between 1892-94. His son Guy Morrison was born in 1893. In 1894 Morrison published his first detective story featuring the detective Martin Hewitt. In November he published his short story collection Tales of Mean Streets, dedicating the work to Henley. The collection was reviewed in 1896 in America by Jacob Riis. Morrison later said that the work was publicly banned. Reviewers of the collection objected to his story Lizerunt, causing Morrison to write a response in 1895. Later in 1894 he published Martin Hewitt, Investigator. In 1895 he was invited by writer and clergyman Reverend A. O. M. Jay to visit the Old Nichol Street Rookery....

Classic detective fiction by one of the earliest rivals of Sherlock Holmes. This book contains seven exciting stories featuring Martin Hewitt.