Sinister Street

Sinister Street is a 1913-14 novel by Compton Mackenzie. It is a kind of bildungsroman or novel about growing up, and concerns two children, Michael Fane and his sister Stella. Both of them are born out of wedlock, something which was frowned upon at the time, but from rich parents.

In the UK, the novel was published as two volumes, and in the USA these appeared as two separate books - Youth's Encounter (1913) and Sinister Street (1914)

Sequels

The book(s) had several sequels, which continue until Michael Fane's marriage. -

• 1917 - Plasher's Mead
• 1918 - Sylvia Scarlett
• 1919 - Sylvia and Michael

Notes

The book was an early favourite of George Orwell. At his prep school in Eastbourne the headmistress, Mrs 'Flip' Wilkes, gave a weekly prize for the best list of books read. Cyril Connolly claimed that between them, he and Eric Blair (Orwell), won it every week. "But not all their reading met Flip's approval. When she found them with Compton Mackenzie's great succès de scandale of 1913, Sinister Street, they were promptly cast into disfavor- and, Orwell thought, may even have been caned for it. It was not surprising that Sinister Street should so rivet young Eric. Its hero, Michael Fane, is studying Classics at a prep school, and moves with his mother from the countryside to Kensington (close to where Orwell's Aunt Nellie lived). He spends holidays in Cornwall (as Orwell's family did), visits Bournemouth (where his Uncle Charlie lived), and meets a girl from an Anglo-Indian family whose father is away in Burma. He visits Eastbourne and thinks what a lovely place. (Hollow laughter from Blair and Connolly, no doubt). Fane envies a wild looking, unkempt boy he sees wandering down Kensington High Street and longs to be 'a raggle-taggle wanderer'.