By the time Joseph Chaim Brenner arrived in London (where Out of the Depths was written) in 1904, his literary reputation was already established by a volume of short stories and a previous novel, In Winter. Born in Russia in 1881, Brenner at the age of twenty-four had fled the disorders of the Russian Empire for the mean peace of London's East End. Out of the Depths is concerned with a group of Russian immigrants in London who work for a Jewish daily newspaper. They are caught up in a conflict with the owner when he seeks to introduce a typesetting machine into the newspaper shop. Following...