Grub street
Related: popular fiction - writing - literature of the UK - London
Description
Grub Street is the former name of the present day Milton Street, London, EC2. The name Grub Street in various forms dates back to 1217 and but was changed in 1830 in order to honour a local builder called Milton. According to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, the term was "originally the name of a street near Moorfields in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called grubstreet".
In current usage the term is used in western literary and journalistic circles to characterize any hack writing, done quickly, for a fee, generally with minimal research. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grub_Street [Sept 2005]
Hack writing
A hack writer is a writer for hire, paid to express others' thoughts or opinions in felicitous verbiage, often in the form of political pamphlets. Some such writers are very talented. Nonetheless, in one vernacular usage, a hack is a person lacking talent or ability. It has been adopted (in British English) as a self-deprecating self-description by journalists.
As a writer for hire, a hack writer is usually remunerated by the number of words: so the implication of hack writing is usually that quantity takes precendence over quality. Hack writing may take the form of ghost writing, or the production of generic novels under pseudonyms (for example romantic fiction under the Mills & Boon brand, or the old Sexton Blakes). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hack_writer [Sept 2005]
Grub Street: studies in a subculture (1972) - Pat Rogers
Grub Street: studies in a subculture (1972) - Pat Rogers [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
See also: writing - subculture