NYRB Classics presents 3 darkly humorous, atmospheric novellas of love and disappointment, set in a run-down London pub after WWI—from the author of the Hitchcock classics Gaslight and Rope. “Bleak and brilliant. . . an authentic lost classic.” — The Guardian Featuring a Dickensian cast of pubcrawlers, prostitutes, lowlifes, and just plain losers who are looking for love—or just an ear to bend—Hamilton’s novels are a triumph of deft characterization, offbeat humor, unlikely compassion, and raw suspense. In recent years, Hamilton has undergone a remarkable revival, with his champions including Doris Lessing, David Lodge, Nick Hornby, and Sarah Waters. Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky is a tale of obsession and betrayal that centers on a seedy pub in a run-down part of London. Bob the waiter skimps and saves and fantasizes about writing a novel, until he falls for the pretty prostitute Jenny and blows it all. Kindly Ella, Bob’s co-worker, adores Bob, but is condemned to enjoy nothing more than the attentions of the insufferable Mr. Eccles; Jenny, out on the street, is out of love, hope, and money. We watch with pity and horror as these three vulnerable and yet compellingly ordinary people meet and play out bitter comedies of longing and frustration.   Included: The Midnight Bell (1929) The Siege of Pleasure (1932) The Plains of Cement (1934) "The rediscovery of English writer Hamilton ( Hangover Square, The Slaves of Solitude ) continues with this tale of obsessive love in the low-rent pubs of 1930s London - so evocatively rendered you almost smell the smoke and spilt ale." -- Newsday   “No other English writer has written so acutely about sexual infatuation, embarrassment and self-delusion.” – Time Out   “Unsurpassed as a recorder of lonely urban existence in the mid-20th century.” –Lynne Truss, The Times [UK]   “Hamilton is a master at reproducing the inflated talk of betrayed lives.” – The Independent [UK]   “The wonderful 1935 trilogy, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky , is set in a pub off the Euston Road. Every detail is spot on; Hamilton’s remorseless eye weaves an atmosphere as thick as bar smoke.” – The Independent [UK]   “Bleak and brilliant…an authentic lost classic.” – The Guardian   “A little-known classic of English literature.” – Seattle Times   “When I came upon Hamilton's name in this book, I got out Hangover Square and found, just as my Penguin edition blurbed, "one of the great novels of the 20th century." (Suffice it to say that Hamilton writes about street life with an honesty and lyricism, an absence of sentimentality or fetish for squalor, that should make nearly every hard-boiled writer hang his or her head in shame.)” –Charles Taylor, Salon.com   “Patrick Hamilton is being revived again. And it looks serious this time… JB Priestley was an early supporter. Hamilton's book The West Pier was generously described by Graham Greene as "the best novel ever written about Brighton". He was John Betjeman's favourite contemporary novelist. Writers from Julie Burchill to Doris Lessing are warm admirers. Biographer Michael Holroyd has written numerous essays and introductions. Nick Hornby recently described him as 'my new best friend'.” — The Independent [UK]   “Until recently, my bedside table has been tilting under the weight of various Victorian novels; now I'm planning a book with a post-war setting and have put myself on a diet of slimmer, mid-20th-century works…Most exciting, however, has been Patrick Hamilton's fiction: I am halfway through The Slaves of Solitude , his nervy, hilarious study of the claustrophobic awfulness of British boarding-house life; now I have his trilogy, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky , to look forward to.” – Sunday Times [UK]   “[Hamilton’s] scenes of pub life (and much of the action of the trilogy takes place off those 20,000 streets in an array of licensed premises) are perfectly realized. They enable him to bring a near-Dickensian sense of the comic to a gallery of the most appalling pub bores. It is certainly worth the attention of a new generation of readers.” – The Birmingham Post [UK]   “This reprinted classic well deserves its shelf space with new novels…The magic lies in Hamilton's ability to get inside the head of his rather tragic and innocent characters, and in his power of description, especially of pubs. The atmosphere of 1920s-30s London hostelries and the joys of having a drink in them makes you long to be there, watching one of the scenes he so vividly describes unfold in the corner.” – Coventry Evening Telegraph   Hamilton captures the "authentic atmosphere of what it was like to live in England between the two world wars". –Michael Holroyd   "He is a master." –J. B. Priestley   “Patrick Hamilton was a marvelous novelist who’s grossly neglected...I’m continually amazed that there’s a kind of roll call of OK names from the 1930s, sort of Auden, Isherwood, etc. But Hamilton is never on them and he’s a