Posthumous Publication
Kathleen mentioned her father's novel to a friend of hers, writer Jessie Pope, who recommended it to her publisher. In April 1914, the publisher bought the rights to the book for £25, and it appeared in Britain, Canada and the United States later that year, in the Soviet Union in 1920, and in Germany in 1925. The version as originally published was heavily abridged by Pope, with much of the socialist ideology removed. Pope's version ended with the novel's hero, Frank Owen, who taught that "money was the cause of poverty", contemplating suicide.
The original manuscript was subsequently located by Tressell advocate F. C. Ball and, after raising funds to acquire and re-assemble the original version, an unabridged edition was published in 1955. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists has won approval from the political left and some academics. It has been cited as a factor in the landslide Labour victory in 1945, and even for the election of two non-Labour-endorsed Communist members of Parliament that same year.
Read more about this topic: Robert Tressell
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