Children of the Streets

Note: This is a preview of “From the Gutters to the Streets”, my 2,200-word article on Harlan Ellison’s fourth short story collection, Children of the Streets, originally published in the now-out-of-print Archive edition of that book. To read the full essay, please join my Patreon account at the $5 “It came from the morgue…” level.

Harlan Ellison’s fourth short story collection, Children of the Streets, was—until the twenty-first century—one of the writer’s most elusive collections. Compiled as a follow-up to his first book of juvenile delinquency tales, The Deadly Streets (Ace Books, 1958), the collection was originally titled Children of the Gutters, a phrase that still appears in several of the story-specific introductions. 

“Ten Weeks in Hell,” the general introduction, was Ellison’s first professional sale, to Lowdown magazine. Despite paying the author $25, the magazine ran someone else’s words with the title “I Ran with a Kid Gang” under the byline of Phil “Cheech” Beldone—the alias Ellison used while undercover with the Barons in Brooklyn—and alongside a photograph of the author with an airbrushed scar in the October 1955 issue. …

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JASON DAVIS
Freelance Writer / Editor