ABSTRACT
In the 1890s Arthur Morrison wrote three books which deal with working-class life in the East End: Tales of Mean Streets (1894), A Child of the Jago (1896) and To London Town (1899). It is in these novels and short stories that we can most clearly see gathered together the various literary and social forces which have been discussed in the preceding chapters. Morrison's work is an amalgam ofBesant, who supplies a new image of the East End; Charles Booth, who clarifies the class structure of that image; and Kipling, from whom Morrison derives his objective, amoral, literary method. To these diverse influences he brings considerable personal experience of working-class life, carefully acquired skill as a reporter, and a simple but vivid prose style. More than any other author it is Arthur Morrison who establishes the tone of slum fiction in the nineties.
