The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

The First UK printing published by Grant Richards in 1914. The BOOK is in near Fine condition. Light pushing at the spine tips. Gilt titling and motif remains very bright. Very Light rubbing of edges in places. Contents entirely complete with a previous owner's name and date to the top edge of the title page and a small oval bookplate of the author Michael Sadleir to the top left corner of the front pastedown. No dust jacket. Housed in a custom black solander box with gilt lettering. A very sharp copy. Robert Tressell (18 April 1870 3 February 1911) was the pen name of Irish writer Robert Croker, who later changed his name to Robert Noonan. He is best known for his novel The 'Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists'. He wrote under the pen name Robert Tressell as he feared the socialist views expressed in the book would have him blacklisted. He chose the surname Tressell as a play on the trestle table, an important part of a painter and decorator's kit. Until the full manuscript was published in 1955, all copies of the book cited the author as Robert 'Tressall'. He completed The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, (originally called The Ragged Arsed Philanthropists) in 1910, but the 1,600-page hand-written manuscript was rejected by the three publishing houses. The rejections severely depressed him and his daughter had to save the manuscript from being burnt. It was placed for safekeeping in a metal box underneath her bed. His daughter mentioned her father's novel to a friend of hers, the writer Jessie Pope, who recommended it to her publisher. In April 1914, the publisher bought the rights to the book for £25, and it appeared in Britain. Writing in the Manchester Evening News in April 1946 George Orwell praised the book's ability to convey without sensationalism 'the actual detail of manual work and the tiny things almost unimaginable to any comfortably situated person which make life a misery when one's income drops below a certain level.' He considered it 'a book that everyone should read' and a piece of social history that left one 'with the feeling that a considerable novelist was lost in this young working-man whom society could not bother to keep alive'. A literary classic and extremely scarce to find as the the true First UK Edition in such collectible condition. Ashton Rare Books welcomes direct contact.