Arthur Morrison (1) (1863–1945)

Dicky isn't Dickensian and I like him more than Oliver- despite Morrison protestations, a modernist telling of poverty and crime in late 19th century London.

When this was presented to me as a "slum novel" I was prepared to hate it. I expected poverty, thugs, filth ... in short, a celebration of human indecency, like "Gangs of New York" in prose form. Well, there was certainly all that, yet strangely I still liked it.

Through all the suffering, ugliness, and ignorance portrayed in this novel, there is also a childlike ... sweetness, for lack of a better word. And not simply because the story focuses on a young boy and his interactions with show more family, friends, and neighbors. All the denizens of the Jago exhibit a poignant appeal that has them coming across as tangible, complex characters.

I think this an overlooked gem of British literature, quite unlike the other British literature of this period that I have read. I would definitely recommend it to others, especially those looking for something that "feels" real. After all, this book was inspired by the author's observations of the real London slum, the Old Nichol. Reading becomes an exercise in morbid fascination, as you wonder how much is fictionalized and how much is genuine. show less

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)



Regular readers will remember that last fall, I became a huge fan of a 1970s BBC television series called The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes which just recently came out on DVD for the first time, a compendium of hour-long TV movies based on the actual Victorian detective stories being published in London's show more penny dreadfuls at the same time as Arthur Conan Doyle's work, almost all of which have fallen into unheard-of obscurity 125 years later. In particular I ended up really loving the episodes based on a character named Horace Dorrington by Arthur Morrison, collected into a single 1897 volume called The Dorrington Deed-Box that is so obscure that not even Project Gutenberg carries it; ah, but it turns out that it is one of the fabled million titles that Google Books has now scanned and added to their massive library, which I recently downloaded in EPUB form and transferred to my Sony Reader e-ink device*, and which I got to read while out at the cafes just like any other book in existence. Excelsior! Behold the glorious modern world in which we live! The future is now, brave cyber adventurers! Enter the matrix and gleam the cube and so forth!

And in fact, all of my fellow Baker Street Irregulars are sure to get a big kick out of the Dorrington stories, precisely because he's essentially the anti-Sherlock Holmes; penned by a literal former East End orphan (the poverty-stricken feral children of Victorian London who Charles Dickens so often wrote about), Morrison's private detective is actually quite the cunning sociopath himself, solving crimes not for any noble purpose but so he can then squeeze the criminals for blackmail money (and eventually turning them in anyway, so that his reputation as an investigator is secure), unafraid to bump off said criminals when they're unwilling to play along. It's a darkly delightful book, full of the same kinds of complex capers as any Doyle volume but without any of the Lawful Good moralizing or sermons, and it makes me realize just what a wide breadth of detective fiction used to exist in the late Victorian period, nearly all of it besides a handful of characters now completely forgotten by the public at large. It comes highly recommended, and in fact with its public-domain status could easily serve as the starting point for a whole series of brand-new tales, for any genre authors out there stuck these days for inspiration.

Out of 10: 8.9, or 9.9 for fans of Victorian detective fiction

*And for those who are curious, by the way, it's only the title page and illustrations that are presented as scanned images in Google EPUB books, like you're seeing in the above photo; the actual body of the work is instead presented as contemporary computer text, so as to be resizable and reflowable just like any other electronic book. show less

Only 100 hardcover copies of this book exist. Each book is decorated with hand-embossed talismans of 22 karat gold on the cover and rear. Needless to say, it's quite a book. The book is a collection of essays about 19th century English witchcraft, specifically focusing on the marshlands of Essex. Two historic figures are discussed at length, Cunning Murrell and George Pickingill. These guys were wizards in the truest sense to the term and the last of the old world cunning folk before the show more re-invention of witchcraft in the 20th century. Both were widely feared and respected throughout the region. The book discusses some of their techniques and methodologies. It also contains vintage etchings of the men and a photograph of Pickingill taken in the mid 1800s.

I found the book absolutely fascinating. Both men were more than likely prodigies or savants. Even without formal medical education both could cure ailments in people and animals. Cunning Murrell had the heavens memorized and could allegedly predict the future through astrology. He predicted the time of his own death right down to the minute years before it happened.

The talismans that decorate the cover and rear are seals of protection reproduced from one of Cunning Murrell's hand-written books on magick; a book that survives to this day. show less