Divers Vanities

By: Arthur Morrison

A thief's trade depends on technique, nerve and the uncertain loyalties of those who live by deception. Across these linked narratives, professional burglars, smugglers and informers move through London beside labourers, dependants and charitable workers, each negotiating the narrow ground between survival and respectability. Criminal slang, reported testimony and dialogue-driven storytelling bring their schemes and judgements into sharp relief, exposing a society in which policing, poverty and fraud are closely entangled. Beyond the city, railway stations give way to villages, marshes, farms, coastal communities and isolated houses. Theft and precarious employment remain pressing realities, but local superstition and ghostly fear begin to unsettle ordinary explanations. Comic satire can turn towards violence; grotesque humour can yield to psychological or supernatural unease. The shifting settings broaden the collection's social world while preserving its attention to people whose security may depend upon a bargain, an accusation or another person's belief. Irony and sympathy coexist throughout these crime stories, complicating easy distinctions between offender and victim, honesty and hypocrisy, conscience and necessity. Social judgement repeatedly proves unreliable, while family obligation, romantic jealousy and the desire to appear respectable create their own forms of danger. The collection's varied voices and moral tales capture working-class life without reducing it to a single viewpoint, allowing deception, compromise and belief to reveal different pressures in urban and rural communities. This book was out of print for decades and is now republished by Alpha Editions. It has been restored for today's and future generations. This edition is not just a reprint - it's a collector's item and a cultural treasure.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9378415482
• ISBN13: 9789378415487
• Release Date: December 2026
• Publisher: Alpha Edition
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.4" x 6.0"