Tells the story of a group of working men who are joined one day by Frank Owen, a journeyman-prophet with a vision of a just society.

Robert Tressell is the pseudonym of Robert Noonan, an Irish housepainter who came to England from South Africa in 1900. He settled in Hastings, where he worked as a signwriter for various building firms. Tressell never lived to see his book in print; he died of tuberculosis in 1911, aged forty.