A CHILD OF THE JAGO

Paperback. Of all the dark corners of London in the 1890s, the Old Nichol, lying off Bethnal Green Road, was the murkiest. In 1895, the author, a successful journalist and writer of short stories, was invited to visit it by the Rector of Shoreditch, who had read and admired Morrison's stories about the East End (where Morrison had been born in 1863), but felt that they reflected only part of East End life. Even Morrison was horrified by what he saw. Within a year he had shaped his experiences into his first full-length novel, lightly disguising the Nichol as 'the Jago'. This is the story of Dicky Perrott, born and bred in this area; but it is also a brilliant portrait of a community where crime and violence are the only way of life, and from which there is no escape for the inhabitants. Only the characters themselves are fictional. Morrison's descriptions of the fearful physical conditions are based directly on what he saw. He conjures up an extraordinarily vivid picture of a world which, even as he wrote, was about to vanish in one of the first of the slum clearance schemes. One of the great 'realist' novels in English literature - the equivalent in fiction of Hogarth's fierce artistic observation of the London slums. With Glossary of Slang and Criminal Terms and Bibliographical Note. 208pp. p/back. From the library of Paul Daniel, ex-editor of the 'Ripperologist' magazine (December 1996 No. 8 - February 2000 No. 27) with his name rubber stamp and green felt-tip date to inside back cover. Lightly browned pp., tiny white spots to fr. cover (see image) o/w Vg. with minimal creasing to covers.