In the Library
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
Robert Tressell, 1914
- Form
- Form Novel
- Reading time
- Reading time 18 hours
- Chapters
- Chapters 54
- Length
- Length 249k words
£1.99
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- Yours for good, on every iPhone you sign in to.
- Read in the app’s own reader, with the original beside the translation where there is one.
- Downloaded, so it reads with no signal.
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About the book
A house painter in the Edwardian seaside town of Mugsborough sits down to a tea of bread and dripping, while his employers cheat the customers and the customers cheat the painters. Robert Tressell, an Irish housepainter who died of tuberculosis in 1911 before the book ever appeared in print, drew the title from his rage at workmen who labour in rags so their masters may dine in silk. Frank Owen tries to explain socialism to his colleagues in the lunch shed using a slice of bread and a knife. They mock him and vote Conservative. It is half manifesto and half fiction, hammered together in the evenings of a dying man, and the hammer marks are still visible on every page.