A novel based on the life of the poet Richard Savage with eighteen b/w. illustrations by John Leech. This is the fairly scarce People's Edition, a slim volume published by John Dicks of The Strand, London in approximately 1880-1900. Richard Savage (c. 1697–1743) was an English poet best known as the subject of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage, originally published anonymously in 1744, on which is based one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets. In 1727 Savage was arrested for the stabbing to death of one James Sinclair in a brawl at a London coffeehouse & was convicted, though later pardoned. On the night of 10 January 1743, Savage was arrested for a debt of eight pounds and confined in the debtors' section of the Bristol Newgate Prison. He died there on 1 August 1743, probably from liver failure brought on by drinking.