All Sorts and Conditions of Men

In All Sorts and Conditions of Men (1882) Walter Besant vividly portrays the poverty and deprivation of London's East End in a story about transformations and crossings of class-boundaries. Simultaneously a "condition of England" novel, New Woman fiction, romance, comedy, satire, and crime story, All Sorts and Conditions of Men has strong roots in the politics of nineteenth-century reform. Angela Messenger, a young idealistic Cambridge graduate, changes her name and takes lodgings in a Stepney boarding-house, determined to use her inherited wealth benevolently. Young aristocrat Harry Le Breton also haunts the East End in an attempt to discover his origins. Their imaginations fired by their perception of need, Angela and Harry plan a Palace of Delight to provide "a little more of the pleasures and graces of life" for the East Enders they have come to know.