Robert Tressell (born Robert Croker, 18 April 1870 – 3 February 1911) was an Irish writer and political activist. He is best known for his novel The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which was published posthumously in 1914. Tressell was born in Dublin, Ireland, to a Protestant family. He was educated at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art and worked as a house painter and decorator. He moved to England in 1895 and worked in various towns in the south of England, including Hastings, Eastbourne, and Southampton. Tressell was a socialist and a member of the Social Democratic Federation. He wrote The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists while working as a house painter in Hastings. The novel was not published during his lifetime, but was eventually published in 1914, three years after his death. Tressell died in 1911 in Southsea, England, of tuberculosis. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Milton Cemetery, Portsmouth.
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