Grub Street

English

Etymology

After Grub Street in London, England (now named Milton Street), a haunt of and home to impoverished writers.

Proper noun

Grub Street

1. The home or state of impoverished writers and literary hacks.

   Upon the occasion of his first publication he quit his day job, only to find that Grub Street wasn't lined with manors and villas but hovels and slums.

   • 1972, Pat Rogers, Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture, page 384:

     Not that the existence of Grub street is to be doubted: it was, indeed, a grim actuality, and many a garreter realised by experience
     How unhappy's the fate
     To live by one's pate
     And to be forced to write hackney for bread.