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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:15'CHAPTER VIII.A CLASP OF HANDS.Gra1l approached the desk with pleasure. Egremont observed it, and met his trusty auditor with the eye- smile which made his face so agreeable.' I am sorry to see that Mr. Ackroyd no longer sits by you,' he began. ' Has he deserted us ?'Gilbert hesitated, but spoke at length with his natural directness.' I'm afraid so, sir.'' He has lost his interest in the subject ?'' It's not exactly the bent of his mind. He only came at my persuasion, to begin with. He takes more to science than literature.'' Ah, I should have thought that. But I wish he could have still spared me the two hours a week. I felt much interest in him; it's a disappointment to lose him so unexpectedly. I'm sure he has a head for our matters as we1! as for science.'Grail was about to speak, but checked himself. An inquiring glance persuaded him to say:' He's much taken up with politics just now. They don't leave the mind very quiet.'' Politics ? I regret more than ever that he's gone.'Egremont moved away from the desk at which he had been standing, and seated himself on the end of a bench which came out opposite the fire-place.' Come and sit down for a minute, will you, Mr Grail ?' he said.Gilbert silently took possession of the end of the next bench.' Is there no persuading him back ? Do you think he would come and have a talk with me ? I do wish he would; I believe we could understand each other. You see him occasionally ?'' Every day. We work together.'' Would you ask him to come and have a chat with me here some evening ?'' I shall be glad to, sir.'' Pray persuade him to. Any evening he likes. Perhaps next Sunday after the lecture would do ? Tell him to bring his pipe and have a smoke with me here befo... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

If you're a fan of happy endings, skip this book.
If you're a fan of happy endings, skip this book-- in fact pass on Gissing entirely.

All the characters, even the saccharine-sweet ones, come to a bad end here. The nicer they are, the more they suffer-- especially if they're poor. Which was a large part of Gissing's point-- poverty sucks.

If you enjoy Theodore Dreiser or Thomas Hardy, Gissing is right up your alley.

The name of this novel, "Thyrza," is the name of the main character. She's a bit too sweet to be believed, but this doesn't ruin the story. Basically she's a smart, poor, young woman who falls in love with an upper class man. The feeling is mutual for him, and this was a really big deal in those times. Oh boy, even the friends and family have to weigh in on this "crisis."

There are many interesting sub-plots and minor characters. You'll learn a lot of tidbits about Victorian London and it's social mores. There are a good number of archaic words and concepts, that are too obscure for the Kindle's dictionary, but that's part of the fun, isn't it?

Reading Gissing takes some getting used to. His novels are over 100 years old, and English was spoken differently then. You don't need to be a scholar or vocabulary whiz, just have some patience.

... Read more

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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.Amazon.com Review
When the gentleman traveler George Gissing headed for Calabriain 1897 he wrote, "Every man has his intellectual desire; mine isto escape life as I know it and dream myself into that old world whichwas the imaginative delight of my boyhood." Gissing, who led alife filled with hardship and bitter disappointment, yearned for therapture of the river Galaesus and the freedom he associated with theclassical vision. Though he encountered rough terrain, pooraccommodations, and often bitter disappointment, he learned the truthabout himself and emerged triumphant. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Ramble to Calabria with Gissing
By 1897, the English novelist George Gissing (1857 - 1903) had achieved a degree of financial and critical success after years of writing. He tooka vacation to Calabria, the "toe" of the southernmost part of the "boot" of Italy. From his youth, Gissing had loved the ancient world.He was especially fond of Gibbon and had been awarded a set of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" for his early academic accomplishments. Calabria had been the home of the Greeks, Romans, and Goths. Although Gissing had earlier traveled to Italy he had never been to Calabria. He was eager to see the places he knew only from books for himself.Thus with guidebook in hand, Gissing set out for his "ramble" to southern Italy.

In 1901, Gissing wrote a short memoir of his journey titled "By the Ionian Sea". At the time of his visit, Calabria was difficult of access, little developed, known for an unhealthy environment, and rarely visited by tourists.Friends and people further north in Italy tried to discourage the visit.But in the first chapter of his book Gissing explained with enthusiasm the attraction Calabria held:

"I shall look upon the Ionian Sea, not merely from a train or a steamboat as before, but at long leisure: I shall see the shores where once were Tarentum and Sybaris, Croton and Locri. Every man has his intellectual desire; mine is to escape life as I know it and dream myself into that old world which was the imaginative delight of my boyhood. The names of Greece and Italy draw me as no others; they make me young again, and restore the keen impressions of that time when every new page of Greek or Latin was a new perception of things beautiful. The world of the Greeks and Romans is my land of romance; a quotation in either language thrills me strangely, and there are passages of Greek and Latin verse which I cannot read without a dimming of the eyes, which I cannot repeat aloud because my voice fails me. In Magna Græcia the waters of two fountains mingle and flow together; how exquisite will be the draught!"

Although almost all of Gissing, including "By the Ionian Sea" remains too little known to modern readers, this short work is among the best travel books ever written. It ranks with the best of Gissing's work and has rarely been out of print.The book is written in a lyrical, elegant prose with Gissing speaking throughout in his own voice about a place he knew and loved. The book has a sense of ease and happiness that is absent from most of Gissing's novels. The book is written with almost painterly detail, as Gissing describes the sea and the mountains, the orange groves, ruins, small dusty towns, hotels, and people that he observed on his journey. Much of the book describes Gissing's search for places of the ancient world.He discusses sites related to Horace, Alaric, Hannibal, Pythagoras, and Cassidorus, among others.Without pedantry, Gissing gives an relaxed sense of the ancient riches of Calabria. Throughout the book, he contrasts the ancient history of the region with the contemporary people he met and places he observed.

Gissing's journey began in Naples, just north of Calabria. The story begins with a short vivid portrait of Naples as well as of his steamship voyage to Paola at the northernmost part of the region.Although located on the sea, much of Calabria is mountainous. Gissing describes his journey from town to town by railroad, horse-drawn carriage, and steamer. The towns described include Taranto, Cotrone, Cantazaro, and Squillace.Gissing concluded his ramble at Reggio, at the southernmost tip of Italy just across from Sicily. He describes the mostly simple and unsophisticated people of the Calabria of his time and the sites.He tells of ancient churches and monasteries, hidden rivers, mountain villages, caves, farmers and their donkeys plowing the fields as they did 1000 years earlier, tiny book stores, street musicians, museums, and frequently bad food.

As had been predicted by his friends, Gissing fell ill with malaria during his visit to the town of Cotrone. He almost died.Gissing recovered his health under the care of a young doctor, Ricardo Sculco, who receives an affectionate portrayal in the story. Even with this serious illness, the overriding tone of the book is one of happiness as Gissing discovered for himself a place he had long only imagined. At the end of his journey, for all his experiences of the sights around him, Gissing's heart remains with antiquity.He concludes the story of his ramble:

"Alone and quiet, I heard the washing of the waves; I saw the evening fall on cloud-wreathed Etna, the twinkling lights come forth on Scylla and Charybdis; and, as I looked my last towards the Ionian Sea, I wished it were mine to wander endlessly amid the silence of the ancient world, to-day and all its sounds forgotten."

In 2000, an American journalist, John Keahey, was inspired by Gissing's travel book. Keahey retraced Gissing's journey of over 100 years earlier and wrote his own sequel, "A Sweet and Glorious Land". (2000) I found it helpful in reading Gissing's book to examine a map of southern Italy.Because I have no independent knowledge of the area, I also found it useful to read the Willkipedia article on Calabria for brief background on the places Gissing so beautifully describes.

Robin Friedman

A Bit Disappointing
George Gissing certainly composes his thoughts in beautiful poetic prose.His style of writing is delightful and descriptive; however, it was difficult for me to get past his obvious prejudice for the Calabrese.He comes across as an arrogant and pampered Englishman with no interest in southern Italy whatsoever except for its ancient Greek ruins.If I had not been in Calabria at the time I was reading this book I would not have finished it.His relentless whining of the people and conditions is tiresome and his description of southern Italian food is questionable considering the delectable ancient recipes of the area.He even comments about his constant complaining at one point, yet makes little effort to be more optimistic.By the Ionian Sea was written over a hundred years ago and is considered a literary piece, but I would not recommend it for anyone interested in learning more about southern Italy or the Calabrian people.

From Heel to Toe Along the Boot of Italy
What possessed George Gissing -- best known for his hardscrabble pictures of poverty in London, such as NEW GRUB STREET -- to travel to Southern Italy and write a classical travel book about his journey? Yet there he is, working his way along the underside of the boot of Italy as a traveller. Even then, the area was known primarily for its rural poverty and has not attracted tourism at any time in its existence since the Greeks settled there over 2,000 years ago.

And yet this is perhaps Gissing's most charming book. He becomes ill, is taken care of by strangers, does his best to escape the clutches of the local bands of outlaws, and succeeds in his quest to see a corner of Europe known to few outside of Italy.

I highly recommend this book as the best introduction to a writer who deserves a revaluation of his literary reputation. ... Read more

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Gissing has been judged to be one of the foremost novelists of the late 19th century ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Mother of Lies!
It's not an accident, nor a pre-Freudian slip, that the heroine of this novel is named Eve, and it's not by chance that the final meeting of the male and female principals of "Eve's Ransom" takes place in a garden. Gissing knew his craft and left little to chance, and thus one can assume that he intended his allusions to the myth of the garden of Eden. "Eve's Ransom" is the most misogynistic tale since the Book of Genesis. It's a rather snarly tale, too, yet an entertaining one to read, tautly composed and 'psychologically' convincing. One can hardly not be reminded of the shorter works of Henry James while reading it; the subject matter is Jamesian - a lop-sided romance - and the narrative perspective is pure James - third-person but entirely framed in the mind of the male principal, Maurice Hilliard. Henry James (1843-1916) and George Gissing (1857-1903) were contemporaries and close literary acquaintances in London. I hesitate to guess who influenced whom, but Gissing's earlier novels were far more similar to works by older British writers. And there's a clue hidden in "Eve's Ransom"; the 'supporting role' feminine go-between in Gissing's story is named Miss Ringrose, as is the shady supporting lady in James's "A London Life". Coincidence? Or was Gissing deliberately writing a James novella of his own?

But there's a huge difference in 'tone' between James and Gissing. The former always gives the impression of bemused sympathy with the follies of his characters, while Gissing treats them with earnest asperity. Asperity! Now, there's a word I probably learned for a spelling bee decades ago and have never had occasion to employ until this moment! But it's the perfect word to describe the tenor of Gissing's novelistic observation. How is one to take the final phrase of the final sentence of Eve's Ransom, when Hilliard sings to himself "a song of the joy of life."? Surely a bitter irony!

I don't feel inclined to leak any of the narrative of this 120-page page-turner. To paraphrase a certain sultry murderess from the cinema; "Eve's ransom isn't very long, is it? I like that in a book."

Orwell anticipated
Reading this late Gissing (1895), I can't help feeling like in a premature early Orwell novel, like the Aspidistra or the Clergyman's Daughter. The two men were so alike in mentality and outlook. There seems hardly any time gap either, despite the actual generation gap.
Our hero is a man who is not satisfied with his lot as a technical draftsman. He has higher aspirations but can't see his way up. He has a lucky break and receives unexpected money from a debtor of his deceased father. He decides to spend it on a year of glorious living, rather than invest it in self-improvement. He meets a young woman whom he fancies but who is lukewarm about him. He goes through his money as planned and loses the girl as expected and feels free at last. What a happy loser.
I loved the novel but hated this edition. It is so full of printing errors that you can never be sure what is really meant. It seems the printing process was handled by people who can't actually read, maybe by Chinese or Arabs who never learned the alphabet.
Example: `he' might easily come out as `lie', which is obviously due to bad eyesight.
The first page has a howler in line 25 or so (which sets the tone):
`... (he was) habited in a way which made it; difficult to as certain his social standing...'
(I am not kidding!)
I do hope Penguin or another decent pocketbook publisher comes up with a proper Gissing edition. I won't punish Gissing with a star deduction, but the packaging really stinks here. It doesn't even have basic publishing data, like year of first printing.
(And thanks to Robin, the only other reviewer of this book, for leading me to Gissing!)

Eve's Ransom
George Gissing (1857 -- 1903) was a late Victorian novelist whose best-known works are "New Grub Street," a story of the difficulty of the literary life in an age of commercialism and "The Odd Women," a novel which examines British feminism in the late 19th Century. Gissing's remaining novels tend to go in and out of print. They attract a small, if devoted, readership. Gissing was a realistic, if highly self-centered, author who tried to portray poor and lower-middle class London life as he found it. He writes, as suggested above, of the difficulties of finding meaning in an age of commercialism and of the difficulties of and ambiguities in relations between the sexes.I have long loved Gissing's books, and wanted to revisit him again.

I was pleased to see that Gissing's short novel "Eve's Ransom" (1894) is again in print. (I knew the book through an old Dover press edition.) Most of Gissing's other novels are lengthy, in the three-book model of the Victorians. Eve's Ransom is short, and the somewhat modernistic form of the book suits Gissing well. It remains one of my favorite of Gissing's works and is a good short introduction for those coming to him for the first time. Because of its unfamiliarity, I will offer a somewhat extended summary of the story in the hopes that it will interest some readers in the book or the author.

Put simply, Eve's Ransom is a story of a young man who loves a woman who doesn't love him back.The primary character is a young man named Maurice Hilliard, possessed of a terrible temper which comes to harm him in the course of the story.Hilliard is unhappily employed as a mechanical draftsman in Dudley, England.He has a contentious encounter with a man named Dengate which results in Dengate repaying Hilliard a debt of over 400 pounds that Dengate had long earlier borrowed from Hilliard's father. With some reason, Dengate predicts that Hilliard will soon dissipate the money and go to the devil.

Hilliard bids farewell to his close friend, Robert Narraamore, quits his job, and forms the ambition to experience what life is about if only for a short time before the money runs out. Before he leaves Dudley, Hilliard's landlady shows him a photograph of a young woman named Eve Madeley who has moved to London. Hilliard becomes enamored of her. With leads from the landlady and others, he is able to find and become acquainted with Eve in London.

The book tells of Hilliard's relationship with Eve and with her friend, the somewhat naive Patty Ringrose. Eve, through intelligence and effort, has worked her way from the poverty of her birth to a solid position as a bookkeeper. She still fears poverty and is determined to avoid falling back to it.Unwittingly, Eve was involved with a married man, but she terminates the relationship when she discovers the marriage.

Ultimately, Eve asks Hilliard for a loan to assist her troubled former lover.Hilliard agrees on condition that Eve and Patty accompany him to Paris, at his expense, so that Eve can free herself from her relationship.Eve reluctantly agrees. She feels grateful to Hilliard for the help but also comes to resent the hold the money and her feeling of gratitude to Hilliard have on her. She does not have the same romantic feelings for Hilliard that Hilliard has for her.

In Paris, Hailliard spends time with his old friend Narramore who is vacationing with a friend named Birching. Narramore has inherited money and is making a success of himself selling beds. Birching is an architect. At Narramore's contrivance, Hailliard uses most of his remaining money to apprentice himself to Birching's firm -- seeking to put his drafting talents and his interest in architecture to good use.He relocates to Birmingham and lives again in poverty as he pursues his architectural apprenticeship. Eve seeks out work, with the expectation that she will marry Haillard when he becomes able to support himself through architecture. A triangle develops with Haillard, Eve and Narramore which is resolved in the latter part of the book.

Gissing's story involves, as is frequently the case in his books, two flawed and not entirely likeable primary characters, Halliard and Eve. The value of the story lies in Gissing's understanding of his characters and in his unerring descriptions of dreary places and people such as rooming houses, small apartments, dingy shops, railway waiting stations, landladies, in London, Dudley, Birmingham and elsewhere. In contrast to other Victorian writers, Gissing had a harsh, misanthropic view of people. Gissing's pessimism is on display in this tale of failed love but with something of a light touch As the story ends, there is a suggestion that Hailliard has found, in a roundabout way, the freedom from care and the ability to live that he hoped to experience when he received the 400 pounds. If chastened, Hilliard has not gone to the devil in the manner that Dengate had predicted. As Gissing eloquently ends his tale: "And Maurice Hilliard, a free man in his own conceit, sang to himself a song of the joy of life."

Gissing is a writer on the border between Victorianism and modernity. Although he is not for everyone, I hope this review may inspire some readers to explore his works for themselves.

Robin Friedman

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Now available in paperback, Gissing: A Life in Books is widely regarded as the definitive biography of this last great Victorian novelist. ... Read more

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What one misses most of all, perhaps, in Barnaby Rudge is a note of high spirits. It is altogether a less vivacious book (Sim Tappertit notwithstanding) than the others of Dickens's early time. One need not seek an explanation in stress of work; the subject sufficiently accounts for a subdued tone. Dennis the Hangman does not provoke hilarity, and after reading the case of Mary Jones (recited at length in the Preface to Barnaby), one's only wonder is that an author who wrote with that story in his mind could still preserve so much of his native humour. ... Read more

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CRITICAL STUDIES OF THE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS//THE IMMORTAL DICKENS//
SINCE I OWN THE 82 YEARS OLD BOOK, I ENJOYED READINGTHIS AND WRITING NOTES [IN THE MARGINS] FOR SCHOOL CLASSES.THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE WITH THE OLD BOOK..IT WOULD DESTORY THIS BOOK...AND AMAZON WILL FIND A BOOK FOR ANYONE IF THE QUESTION IS ASKED. THANKS AMAZON FOR RESEARCH...DORAN E. FIGART ... Read more

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Originally published in 1903.This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read the material themselves. ... Read more

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Five signed stories never before reprinted, a sixth signed story and seven recent attributions, this collection is edited with introduction and commentary by Robert L.Selig. It makes available to scholars and libraries the inaccessible works of George Gissing's earliest period, along with information about his Chicago exile. An extended introduction is followed by eleven stories, each accompanied by a separate commentary. ... Read more

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Publisher: London, Chapman ... Read more

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Gissing's "American Notebook" is a detailed record of the books he read, quotations that struck him, ideas for stories, and names and addresses of periodicals and their editors and publishers. Given the paucity of letters or personal documents relating to the year Gissing spent in America, the publication of the "American Notebook", almost the last of his writings to appear in print, should interest Gissing scholars and general readers alike, for the light it may throw upon biographical and professional questions connected with this crucial period when he started his career as a writer. ... Read more