Besides being a bookseller, publisher and literary agent, Henry Hyde Champion (1859–1929) – the subject of this fascinating biography – was also, at various stages, an army officer, a journalist, and a socialist organiser. Born in England to a wealthy family with aristocratic roots, Champion turned his back on a conventional upper-class life after witnessing the appalling poverty of London’s East End. He embarked on what was to become a lifetime of activism on behalf of the poor and the working classes. Champion was a pioneer socialist of late nineteenth-century England and in this capacity, had dealings with such luminaries as George Bernard Shaw and the union leader John Burns. He was a key participant in the London Dock Strike of 1889, which was to prove a watershed for the labour movement, and was an early promoter of the eight-hour day.