Blade-O'-Grass. Golden Grain. and Bread and Cheese and Kisses.

Three short novels of London poverty: a foundling of the streets, a miser's household, and a shop where kindness is the only capital. B. L. Farjeon had been a printer in Australia and New Zealand before returning to write Dickensian fiction of the East End. The sentiment is thick, and the observation of what a shilling buys is exact. Twenty plates by painters including Luke Fildes and John Atkinson Grimshaw run from Glasgow docks to a prison souvenir, matching the book's streets and hard bargains.