ABSTRACT
Clarence Rook (1863–1915) was a journalist, novelist and short story writer about whom relatively little is known. Some sources list him as American but it seems most likely that he was British. He was best known for his novel of working-class life, The Hooligan Nights, from which this extract is taken, which purported to be the literary result of a series of interviews with a seventeenth- year-old petty criminal named ‘Alf’. Early versions of parts of the work were serialized in the Daily Chronicle, and the texts formed a major departure from Rook’s earlier works, which had consisted primarily of amusing and well-observed studies of the niceties of middle-class life. The final decades of the nineteenth century witnessed a resurgence of middle-class interest in the labouring poor. The narratives presented are also written in a non-judgemental and balanced tone.
