First published in 1971, this collection of short stories, set in the East End of London in the 1890s, offers a corrective to the view of nineties' literature as dominated by aestheticism, and shows how many late Victorian writers tried to break with Dickensian models and write of working class life with less moral intrusion and a greater sense of realism.

The editor has provides a succinct, historical and critical introduction, a bibliography of further reading, notes on the authors and stories, and a glossary of slang and phoneticized words. This book will be of particular interest to students of Victorian literature.