Compton MacKenzie 
Sinister Street, Vol 1 

Sinister Street is a 1913-1914 novel by Compton Mackenzie. It is a kind of Bildungsroman or novel about growing up, and concerns two children, Michael Fane and his sister Stella. Both of them are born out of wedlock, something which was frowned upon at the time, but to rich parents. In the UK, the novel was published in two volumes. However, in the United States, the volumes appeared as two separate books: Youth’s Encounter (1913) and Sinister Street (1914). It is the picture of the development of a very precocious boy into a sophisticated young man of the nineteen-tens, and the picture is painted with a detail and wealth of reference unattempted by other authors of Mackenzie’s experience.