Description
Robert Tressell brilliantly displays why the poor stay poor and the rich get richer in the chapter “The Great Money Trick”.
In this timeless depressingly realistic classic of working-class literature, the relationship between the haves and the have-nots is portrayed through the labor of workmen painting a mansion in the fictional English town of Mugsborough.
Tressell calls out the hypocrisy of religion and the exploitation of workers by a select few through heartbreakingly powerful metaphors, like one of the workers collapsing to his death on the job one day, paintbrush in hand; in perpetual hope for a better tomorrow until his last breath.
The philanthropists in the title refer to the workmen who acquiesce the value of their work to their masters.
George Orwell described this as “a book that everyone should read.” And described Tressell as “a considerable novelist who was lost in this young working-man whom society could not bother to keep alive”.
“Tressell’s bitterness and anger are mixed with compassion, sympathy, and a sharp sense of humor.”
~Jonah Raskin, American writer
“Robert Tressell died penniless, and was buried in a pauper’s grave, and I often think that might have been me if it wasn’t for this book. At times it will make you weep because of what was happening to those characters on that page. It stirred up again in me the beauty of reading.”
~Ricky Tomlinson, English actor, author, and political activist
Details
Publisher - Forgotten Books
Author(s) - Robert Tressall
Hardback
Published Date -
ISBN - 9781396317026
Dimensions - 22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm
Page Count - 498
Paperback
Published Date -
ISBN - 9781396317002
Dimensions -
Page Count -
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