Robert Tressell

Robert Tressell was the pen name of Robert Noonan (1870–1911), an Irish-born house painter and sign writer. Born in Dublin, he lived for some years in South Africa before settling in Hastings, on the south coast of England, where he worked as a decorator and became an active socialist. Drawing on his own working life, he wrote The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, a novel about exploited building workers in a town he called Mugsborough. He died of tuberculosis in Liverpool, apparently on his way to Canada, and was buried in a pauper's grave. His daughter saw an abridged version of the novel published in 1914.