Robert Tressell's literary significance rests entirely on one work, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which was first published posthumously in a shortened edition in 1914. While it has not yet found a secure place in any academic literary canon, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, whether in its abridged or complete form--published in 1955--continues to be read, reprinted, and discussed. Centered on working-class life in the southern English town of Hastings at the turn of the twentieth century, it is a work whose comedy and realism, tinged with the fantastic, place it squarely in the tradition of Charles Dickens. In other respects, however--particularly in its working-class subject matter and its stated aims--it is quite distinctive. While earlier novelists had certainly written about the lives of working-class men and women, one of the aspects that makes Tressell's novel unique is the relationship he establishes between his workmen and their work. The brief horrifying...