| Description | Scope and Content
The manuscript consists of 293 loose pages (plus 4 un-numbered pages containing the title and dedication), the text of the novel being written in pencil, first published in 1896, by Methuen and Company.
The Oxford Companion to English Literature states that the novel 'describes the boyhood of Dick Perrott in an East End slum off Shoreditch High Street, and gives a vivid account of the violent crime of the neighbourhood known in real life as 'The Nichol' [in Bethnal Green; the area was re-developed in the 1890s when the Boundary Street Estate was built]. Dicky's good instincts are frustrated by the environment, his father is hanged for murder, and he dies aged 17 in a street fight. In an 1897 preface Morrison rejected the label of 'realist', but his work belongs to the same school as that of George Moore and resembles the early Maugham'. |