The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

House painters in a south coast town, the contractor cheating them, and one man who tries to explain socialism to the others while they mock him. Tressell was a signwriter who died of tuberculosis before publication; his daughter sold the manuscript for twenty-five pounds and the book has been credited with helping win the 1945 election. Fifty-eight plates by painters including George Clausen and Edvard Munch follow labourers home from field and shore, the working lives Tressell's house-painters knew.