SOURCE: “Arthur Morrison: A Commentary with an Annotated Bibliography of Writings About Him,” in English Literature in Transition 1880-1920, Vol. 28, No. 3, 1985, pp. 276-97.

In the following essay, Calder briefly surveys the critical response to Morrison's work.

In his introduction to the 1969 edition of A Child of the Jago, P. J. Keating points out that little is known of Arthur Morrison's life before the beginning of his career as an author in the early 1890s and that little is known of his years following his retirement from writing in 1911. The scant facts are that he was born in Poplar, in the East End of London, on 1 November 1863, the son of an engine fitter. In his early twenties, he was employed in the administration of the People's Palace, the charitable institution established by Walter Besant. Following a year as sub-editor of The Palace Journal, he worked for a West End...