Tales of Mean Streets (Illustrated)

In Tales of Mean Streets, Morrison's characters live and die around the East End of the late Victorian period. But, many of these people's lives and problems are still recognizable and being experienced by poor people in today's Britain.

These are not stories of an idealised working class but people whose grinding poverty and lack of prospects result in hopeless, disappointed lives. Be it the young woman who drifts into an abusive relationship with a violent man, the young starving man trying to get a break by boxing, the mental breakdown of a man abandoned with young children or the mother and daughter who die living a life of genteel starvation, we can recognise that their tragedies result from the poverty of their lives.

Even those who get a break by coming into money find themselves failing - the 'spend, spend, spend' mentality, the failed business or, in a weirdly relevant story for modern times, the amateur buy to let landlord who is ruined by lack of understanding of what he is doing, bad tenants and finally a 'friend' of the mortgage lender ready to buy back cheaply what has cost the old man his money and health.

There are some clever observations of working class life including a Friday night on the bus across the river to get a late drink or a night out at the fair. Some of the characters are unpleasant and utterly without shame. Morrison seems to have no time for those ideological or religious movements operating in the East End at the time. The Church is a ridiculous place that redeems no one, the Anarchist is revealed by the proletariat to be cowardly and lacking in all conviction, the Trade Unionist is a vile bully setting thugs on an old man rendering him unable to work and sent to the workhouse while sub-letting the old man's property and thundering on soap boxes against evil landlords.

Arthur Morrison is a lively writer, not afraid to confront the sexual and violent world of his characters but this isn't a moralising set of stories. He shows you their lives, he leaves the characters where they are. The rest is up to you (Goodreads).

Arthur George Morrison (1863-1945) was an English author and journalist, known for his realistic novels about London's East End and for his detective stories. In 1890 he left his job as a clerk at the Peoples Palace and joined the editorial staff of the Evening Globe newspaper. The following year he published a story entitled A Street which was subsequently published in book form in Tales of Mean Streets (1894). Around this time Morrison was also producing detective short stories which emulated those of Conan Doyle about Sherlock Holmes. Three volumes of Martin Hewitt stories were published before the publication of the novel for which Morrison is most famous: A Child of the Jago (1896). Other less well-received novels and stories followed, until Morrison effectively retired from writing fiction around 1913. Between then and his death, he seems to have concentrated on building his collection of Japanese prints and paintings. Amongst his other works are Martin Hewitt: Investigator (1894), Zig-Zags at the Zoo (1894), Chronicles of Martin Hewett (1895), Adventures of Martin Hewett (1896) and The Hole in the Wall (1902).

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