author
Robert Tressell
1870–1911
Best known for a single, unforgettable novel, this Irish writer turned his years as a house painter and sign writer into one of the sharpest portraits of working-class life in early 20th-century Britain. His story is closely tied to The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, a book that kept growing in influence long after his death.
1 Audiobook
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
by Robert Tressell
About the author
Born in Dublin in April 1870 as Robert Noonan, he later wrote under the pen name Robert Tressell. He spent part of his life in South Africa, where he worked as a painter and decorator and was drawn into political ideas that shaped his writing, before returning to England and settling in Hastings.
While working for local builders, he wrote The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, a semi-autobiographical novel based on the lives, labor, and hardships of working men. Its mix of humor, anger, and clear-eyed social criticism gave it lasting power, and it eventually became a classic of socialist literature.
Tressell died in Liverpool in February 1911, before his novel was published. Even so, the book went on to win generations of readers and helped secure his reputation as a writer who gave ordinary workers a vivid and memorable voice.