The eponymous narrator is a Sussex country boy who is taken to London by his uncle Sir Charles Tregellis, a highly respected gentleman and arbiter of fashion who is on familiar terms with the most important people of Great Britain. The novel interweaves Rodney's coming-of-age story with that of his friend Boy Jim's boxing endeavors, and a large portion of it deals with the famous bare-knuckle boxers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is best known for creating Sherlock Holmes.