Liza of Lambeth
Following the publication of Liza of Lambeth, W. Somerset Maugham would go on to establish himself as one of the best-selling and most prolific novelists of the twentieth century. For all that Liza did not dramatize life in a thieves’ den or depict the poor as atavistic brutes, its honest treatment of working-class pastimes and…
A Child of the Jago
“Learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing. … Do your devilmost … for the Jago’s got you!” Dicky Perrott, growing up in the notoriously criminal enclave of the Jago, listens and learns. Compelled by his family’s circumstances to provide for his mother and siblings, he…