ABSTRACT
Walter Besant was educated at King's College, London, and Christ's College, Cambridge. From 1861 to 1867 he taught at the Royal College in Mauritius. Walter Besant was a practical man, the first president of the Society of Authors and active in their struggle for fairer contracts and copyright regulations. A professional man in the newly commercialized world of letters, he opposed the romantic cliche of the author as a seer. The idea for her second big project is given her by Harry, with whom she becomes good friends as they recognize in each other the mark of genteel culture and education but remain ignorant of each other's backgrounds. Angela's and Harry's projects work to illustrate the democratic political program they wish to put forward to the people of Whitechapel and Stepney. Contemporaneously with Besant, the “literary” novel was producing a number of exercises far less interested in exploring viable modes of democratic writing and living.
