Hanging Johnny
Myrtle Johnston
January 1, 2025
ISBN 9798218548261 / Paperback / 228 pages / $15.99

First published in 1927, Hanging Johnny is the haunting debut novel of eighteen-year-old Irish writer Myrtle Johnston, now rediscovered in a new Tough Poets Press edition.

Set in rural Ireland in the 1870s, the novel follows a reluctant young man forced into the grim trade of executioner. With simple, unflinching prose and an undercurrent of deep compassion, Johnston turns a tale of poverty, superstition, and moral conflict into a powerful study of humanity's darkest burdens.

"Hanging Johnny, the work of an eighteen-year-old Irish girl, is a remarkable novel, not 'under the circumstances,' but absolutely. . . . The tale is told with admirable brevity, with a most skillful economy of detail; and deep, for the characterization shows both imagination and wisdom, both sympathy and dispassionateness."
— The Atlantic

"Author Johnston shows no trace of youthfulness in the grim story she tells with relentless force, compassion, and restraint. She is 18."
— TIME Magazine

"Some critics have compared Miss Johnston to Thomas Hardy; with proper reservations the same comparison might be made to Dostoievsky. She writes with intensity and simplicity, and the story moves to its conclusion with a swift economy of words that allows for no letdown in interest."
— The Overland Monthly

"It is a strange story, told with haunting beauty by an 18-year-old Irish girl."
— Publishers Weekly

"So unusual and so refreshing it is to acclaim a new writer of genius."
— The Spectator (London)