Publisher's Synopsis
CLASSIC BOOKS - Two Adventures of Martin Hewitt by Arthur Morrison - The Case of the Flitterbat Lancers - The Case of the Ward Lane Tabernacle - Arthur George Morrison (1 November 1863 - 4 December 1945) was an English writer and journalist known for his realistic novels and stories about working-class life in London's East End, and for his detective stories, featuring the detective Martin Hewitt. He also collected Japanese art and published several works on the subject. He left a large collection of paintings and other works of art to the British Museum after his death in 1945. Morrison's best known work of fiction is his novel A Child of the Jago (1896). In 1885 Morrison published his first serious journalistic work in the newspaper The Globe. In 1886, after having worked his way up to the rank of a third-class clerk, he was appointed to a position at the People's Palace, in Mile End. In 1888 he was given reading privileges at the British Museum. In the same year he published a collection of thirteen sketches entitled Cockney Corner, describing life and conditions in several London districts including Soho, Whitechapel, and Bow Street. In 1889 he became an editor of the paper Palace Journal, reprinting some of his Cockney Corner sketches, and writing commentaries on books and other subjects including the life of London poor people. In 1890 he left this job and joined the editorial staff of the The Globe and moved to lodgings in the Strand. In 1891 he published his first book The Shadows Around Us, a collection of supernatural stories. In October of 1891 his short story A Street was published in Macmillan's Magazine. In 1892 he collaborated with illustrator J. A. Sheppard on a collection of animal sketches, one entitled My Neighbors' Dogs, for The Strand Magazine. Later that year he married Elizabeth Thatcher at Forest Gate. He befriended writer and editor William Ernest Henley around this time, publishing stories of working-class life in Henley's National Observer between 1892-94. His son Guy Morrison was born in 1893.
