In the impoverished suburb of Dublin, Sean O'Casey was born as the last of 13 children to Protestant parents and was raised "on the street." Due to a vitamin deficiency, he nearly went blind and could only attend primary school for three years. He became a messenger boy, then a construction worker, and later a railway worker. He learned and read with the thorough passion of a self-taught individual. "As I Knocked" is the story of a childhood in Dublin, regarded as one of the finest autobiographies in world literature.