SOURCE: Pearl, Cyril. “Originality and Genius.” In his Always Morning: The Life of Richard Henry “Orion” Horne, pp. 27-45. Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1960.

In the following excerpt, Pearl examines Horne's, Exposition on the False Medium and Barriers Excluding Men of Genius from the Public, his early plays, and his contributions to the journal Monthly Repository.

Behind its splendid façade, its Regency mansions, parks and squares, London in the reign of William IV was a place of squalor, hunger, barbarism and fear—fear of civil war and fear of cholera. There was acute class conflict and sanitation was appalling. The Reform Bill of 1832 did great things for the English constitution and nothing for the English people; it abolished a few rotten boroughs and left untouched a thousand rotten streets. The working-class which had played an important part in the struggle for the Bill was not merely left out...