Life
?1870-1911; [b. Robert Noonan]; prob. born Belfast [var. Irish extraction];
became painter and decorator in Hastings; d. of TB; wrote The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (abridged 1914;
1918), set in “Mugsborough” and based on Hastings experiences, centred on Frank Owen, who lectures fellow-workers labouring to make money for
employers who desport themselves on the continent; d. of TB, Liverpool; left the MS of his famous novel to a dg., who succeeded
in finding a publisher for an abridged version; MS of famous novel rediscovered
in 1945 and edited by F. C. Ball (1955); Tressell is quoted in Brendan Behan’s Borstal Boy; there is a 747pp. Penguin rep. edn. (2204). OCEL
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Criticism
F. C. Ball, Tressell of Nagsborough (1951), port.
F. C. Ball, One of the Damned: The Life and Times of Robert Tressell [...&c.] (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1973), xiii, 266pp., pls. & ports.; Do. [rep.] (London: Lawrence & Wishart 1979), Extracts from One of the Damned: The Life and Times of Robert Tressell, Author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist [Hastings Classics] (Hastings: Logos 1997), 10pp., ill.
Tristram Hunt, intro. The Ragged Trousered Philsophers (London: Penguin 2004).
Jack Mitchell, ‘Early harvest, three anti-capitalist novels
published in 1914’, in H. Gustave Klaus, ed., The Socialist Novel
in Britain (Harvester 1982).
Patrick O’Sullivan, ‘Patrick MacGill, the making of a writer’, in Seán Hutton & Paul Stewart, eds., Ireland’s Histories, Aspects of State, Society, and Ideology (Routledge 1991), pp.203-222.
Cahal L. Dallat, in ‘Summer Books’, Fortnight 330, reviewing Dermot Bolger, ed., Ireland in Exile (New Island Bks. 1994).
Brian Power, review of Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists [reiss.] (Lawrence & Wishart 2003), 634pp, in Books Ireland (March 2003).
D. J. Taylor, ‘One for the Workers’, review, in Times Literary Supplement (15 Oct. 2004).
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Notes
Margaret Drabble, ed., Oxford Companion of English Literature
(OUP: 1985), notes that its debates on socialism, competition, employment,
and capitalism are skillfully interwoven with a realistic and knowledgeable
portrayal of skilled and unskilled labour; principle chars. include Frank
Owen, socialist craftsman, Barrington, socialist son of wealthy father,
and the inadequate but well-intentioned Eastons.
Website: There is a commemorative website at www.1066.net/tressell/.
Nag/Mug?: COPAC gives F. C. Ball, Tressell of Nagsborough (1951) but also Tressell of Mugsborough (1951) in caps [err.].
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)