SOURCE : "The Damned and the Innocent: Two Novels by Arthur Morrison," in London Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 2, February, 1980, pp. 62-7.

In the following essay, Severn praises Morrison's work in A Child of the Jago and A Hole in the Wall.

Of the minor novelists who formed the 'realist' school at the turn of the century only Gissing has an established place in the literature of his time. Arthur Morrison, who at his best was a writer of greater power, has been forgotten. The reason is not far to seek: of his 15 volumes only one is truly distinguished, and one other notable enough to merit consideration.

Morrison was born in 1863, the son of an East End engine fitter (a background that he was at some pains to conceal), and spent some time in his twenties as a social worker in Walter Besant's People's Palace in Mile End Road. He turned...