Book Description
The fiftieth anniversary of Victoria's reign is a year ofcelebration and, for young Londoners, a year to experience adult society.After the Jubilee, it will be time to face the consequences of innocentpleasures and frivolous pursuits. A cigarette-smoking business woman, an"examination girl," and an ad man complete the cast for Gissing's(1857-1903) pessimistic evaluation of mass culture.Download Description
Tarrant, meanwhile, having drunk a cup of tea, and touched his moustache with a silk handkerchief, transferred himself from the camp-stool to the basket chair vacated by Jessica. He was now further from Nancy, but facing her. 'I have been talking with Mrs Bellamy,' fell from him, in the same tone of idle good nature. 'Do you know her? She has but one subject of conversation; an engrossing topic, to be sure; namely, her servants. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

middle-class struggles and emerging feminism..
Sad to say, most people, even those who are fans of Victorian-era literature, have probably never heard of George Gissing.Those who do know him think perhaps he was a 'one hit wonder' with New Grub Street.While New Grub Street is a brilliant read, his little known In the Year of the Jubilee (IYJ) is also a gem.

On the surface, IYJ is a story common to Victorian-era novels.People are obsessed with the thought of inheriting money, making sure they are viewed as 'refined' rather than 'working class', and the notion of 'family values' is taken to an extreme.However in IYJ we finally see the emergence of the middle class, people who are in white collar jobs and who see the value in working (rather than living off of someone else's fortune).And most shocking for a Victorian novel, the most forceful character is a young woman who actually seeks out work to keep her life interesting (and not depend on her estranged husband).

IYJ is well-written, thought-provoking without being preachy, andshould be held in esteem on par with the works from James, Eliot, Wharton and, indeed, other works from George Gissing. ... Read more

Amazon.com
When the gentleman traveler George Gissing headed for Calabria in 1897 he wrote, "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." Gissing, who led a life filled with hardship and bitter disappointment, yearned for the rapture of the river Galaesus and the freedom he associated with the classical vision. Though he encountered rough terrain, poor accommodations, and often bitter disappointment, he learned the truth about himself and emerged triumphant. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

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

Customer Reviews (4)

A new perspective on Gissing, relaxedin Italy
Out of left field, from the editors of TheCollected Letters of George Gissing, comes a refeshing new view of Gissing--plus some charming turn-of-century Americana. The oddly successful combinaton comes about inthis way.When the English novelist, desperate to escape for a time fromhis miserable marriage, visited Italy in 1897-98, he met there a 20-yearold American traveller named Brian Boru Dunne.The precocious young man,who would later become a journalist in Santa Fe, New Mexico, kept a diaryof their conversations over several months, recording Gissing's opinions onliterature, modern and ancient Rome, and everything else that interestedthem. Years later, he wrote p some of his notes.The diary is lost, butthe editors have used Dunne's surviving materials to create a fascinatingportrait that shows us a more unbuttoned and humorous Gissing than we knew. Because Dunne is worthy of interest in himself, they have seen fit toinclude some other pieces: William Jennings Bryan's unconsciously hilariousrules for oratory; Cardinal Gibons' recipe for longevity; and an interviewwith Mark Twain written by Twain himself.Their 40-page introduction toDunne and Gissing is unexpectedly fascinating.The voluminous footnotesexplain so much, and in such style, that they are an integral part of thereading experience. This beautifully produced, amusing, and illuminatingmiscellany should attract all Gissing readers, and they will be rewarded bymore than they bargained for.

Avaluable addition to Gissing biography.
As a long-time student of George Gissing's work and one of his first biographers, I was delighted to read this vivid and perceptive first-hand account of his activities and opinions. Few people whoknew Gissingpersonally have left memoirs of him, and Dunne's iscertainly the fullestup-close portrait that we have. He describes Gissing's writing and eatinghabits, his attention toclothes, his reactions to Italy and his people,and his opinions of other writers, and all this helps to clarify thenovelist's character. I especially appreciated the excellent informativenotes, which provided much needed background, and brought Dunne himselfforward as an interesting and significant figure.

A great read even if you don't know Gissing
I stumbled onto George Gissing two years ago through his travel classic "By The Ionian Sea: Notes on a Ramble Through Southern Italy." I had not read much late-Victorian writing, except for brief forays intoThomas Hardy. Now I have found a new champion -- George Gissing -- and amdiscovering that post-industrial era through his works. In this process, Idiscovered Dunne's delightful memoir and was drawn to it because itrecalled a time in Gissing's life when he seem most happiest: his 1897-1898tour of Southern Italy, the setting for "By the Ionian Sea."Dunne's memoir -- wonderfully edited to fully explain all references, fromobvious to obscure -- can be read on more than one level. First, it gives avivid recounting, through an innocent young journalist's eyes that misslittle,of a golden three or four months or so in Rome, hobnobbing withGissing and two other Victorian writers, H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle.It also can be seen as "a work in progress" where the reader canexamine how Dunne, by now in middle age and an accomplished writer in hisown right, moved from diary through drafts of memoirs. And particularlyimportant for the Gissing enthusiast is the introduction, which puts theera in perspective and paints a vivid picture of the players in Dunne'sRoman holiday.

An intense and authentic remembrance.
The author of this book is Brian Boru Dunne (1878-1962).The editors of this remarkable memoir want to point out that it is unlike anything we might expect from one writer memorializing another.Brian Dunne was a veryyoung man from an Irish-American family, who had recently studied in aBelgian college with princes of the aristocratic de Croy family, metGissing by accident in Siena, and then spent several months with him inRome.The Roman period was an unusually happy one for Gissing, whoentertained H.G. Wells and socialized with many important people there,including such other writers as Arthur Conan Doyle and Ernest Hornung.AsGissing's frequent companion, Dunne wrote it all down in his diary,preserving a record of their daily escapades and quotidian conversations inthe fresh, unguarded manner of a young man whose mind was uncluttered byany adult protocol, social philosophy, or professional agenda.He went onto become the city editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican, met and interviewedmost of the leading figures of the day, and wrote several memoirs whichwill be published in due time.In Gissing's case, he remained faithful tohis diary and produced a lively, vivid, and patently authentic account aofa man who was regarded as one of the leading novelists of the time.PaulF. Mattheisen ... Read more

Book Description
Gissing and the City: Cultural Crisis and the Making of Books in Late Victorian England addresses the late Victorian cultural crisis and aesthetic revolt in urban life, politics, literature and art, by special reference to the experience of the shocks of the new urban environment, and literary and artistic responses. It does so through interdisciplinary discussion of the novels of George Gissing, whose work is particularly linked to 'the city' and the crisis of urban experience, especially in the archetypal modern imperial city. ... Read more

Book Description
Three generations of critics have commented on the parallelsbetween George Orwell and his favorite novelist, George Gissing. "I ama great fan of his," Orwell wrote in 1948, proclaiming "that Englandhas produced very few better novelists." This in-depth study revealsthat Orwell drew heavily on the Gissing novels he admired in shapinghis own. Gissing's New Grub Street and The Odd Women directlyinfluenced Orwell's Depression-era novels Keep the Aspidstra Flying andA Clergyman's Daughter. Even Orwell's most imaginative work, AnimalFarm, mirrors Gissing's own novel of a failed Socialist Utopia, Demos.Gissing was Orwell's role model and alter ego. Gissing provided himwith a touchstone to his beliefs, his pessimism, his love of Dickensand cozy corners, his suspicion of "progress," his restless sexuality.To understand Orwell fully, one must first read Gissing. ... Read more

Book Description
Half biography and half critical study, this book about George Gissing is for the general reader. It draws a parallel between the women in Gissing's life and the women in his novels. His books span the last two decades of the nineteenth century and are memorable for their portraits of women. Only a few women played active roles in Gissing's life, but all exerted a lasting influence. Their imprint allowed him to portray women vividly and with unerring realism, though at times in variable tones of gray...in charcoal. Gissing's feminine portraiture, rendered in shades of somber experience, is one of the most striking features of his work and one of the most valuable for the reader of today. It derived from his intense and abiding interest in the women of his time and the way they lived their lives. His portraits of women, warm and human, were shaped in all their detail by an essential sympathy that made them neither topical nor contemporary but timeless. Some of the women in his life became models for fictional women as alive today as when he first created them. ... Read more

Book Description
Perhaphs no theme dominates the Victorian novel more than that of money; no other Victorian novelist was more preoccupied with this subject than George Gissing (1857-1903).

In the first full-length study of money in the work of this perplexing, compelling writer -- described by George Orwell as "perhaphs the best novelist England has produced" -- Simon J. James examines how Gissing's work dramatizes the hold of capital on every facet of everyday life, including love, art, virtue and morality. Unsettled Accounts situates Gissing's work within Victorian anxieties over society's transformation by changes in the nature of its economy -- that money's power was both ever-increasing, and a malevolent influence. Gissing's best-known novels, such as The Odd Women and his celebrated novel of literary life New Grub Street, expose the competitive individualism of Victorian society.

Unsettled Accounts locates Gissing's novels alongside the place of money in other nineteenth-century writing, in particular the novels of Charles Dickens, a key influence. This study also examines the range of Gissing's preoccupations, from the condition of the working class, to the making of sexual difference, to the comodification of art, and demonstrates why Gissing's dissident but accurate representations of the emergent modernity of late nineteenth-century urban culture deserve a unique place in English literary history.

Unsettled Accounts constitutes both a valuable introduction to Gissing's work and a groundbreaking study of the contexts which shaped the development of his work. This book will be compelling reading not only for anyone interested in Gissing, but also for readers concerned with the economics of the Victorian novel, and with fin-de-siècle literary culture. ... Read more

Book Description
"The names of Greece and Italy draw me as no others; they make me young again. The world of the Greeks and Romans is my land of romance."

In 1897 the Victorian novelist George Gissing undertook a brief but eventful journey in southern Italy. His itinerary took him from Naples to Reggio di Calabria, via Paola, Cosenza, Crotone, and Squillace, through the area once known as Magna Graecia. Meditating on the vestiges of Greco-Roman civilization, Gissing visited tombs, temples, museums, and cathedrals in search of the imprint of antiquity and "that old world which was the imaginative delight of my boyhood." The result was By the Ionian Sea, first published in 1901.

By turns lyrical and melancholy, Gissing's masterpiece of travel writing alternates between light and dark, life and death, Paganism and Christianity. Looking at Italy in both its classical and contemporary dimensions, By the Ionian Sea celebrates Calabria's rich cultural past and beautiful landscapes while providing a candid account of hardship and poverty in southern Italy.

More than a century after its first publication, this is the first critical edition of the book in English. ... Read more

Book Description
New Grub Street has long been recognized as the most important nineteenth-century novel on the subject of the writing professions. Indeed, no novel in the English tradition even remotely approximates the thoroughness, sophistication, and clear-sightedness with which New Grub Street explores the social and economic contexts in which writing, publishing, and reading take place. The critical introduction to this edition gives an account of Gissing's life and times and an overview of the most important stylistic and thematic features of New Grub Street; special attention is given to the writing and publishing professions in late-Victorian England, emphasizing the range of social and economic positions that writers occupied during the period.

New Grub Street is the only one of Gissing's two dozen novels never to have gone out of print, and is widely considered to be his masterpiece. This edition includes an introduction and a rich selection of historical material on the literary world of London through the centuries, authorship as a profession, and Gissing's life and work.Download Description
And as to living up at the very top, why, there were distinct advantages--as so many people of moderate income are nowadays hastening to discover. The noise from the street was diminished at this height; no possible tramplers could establish themselves above your head; the air was bound to be purer than that of inferior strata; finally, one had the flat roof whereon to sit or expatiate in sunny weather. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Gissing's shade would smile
Poor Gissing! I suspect his miserable, self-destructive life fuelled his wonderful novels much as (we now know) Dickens's traumatic "blacking-factory" experienceexplains so much of the nightmare world of those gargantuan fictions.Gissing greatly admired Dickens, and like Dostoyevsky, seems to have appreciated the grim side of Dickens most.Not much humor in Gissing; but there is the same shabby poetry one used to see in Bloomsbury back in the 1960s.The same wonderful appreciation of futile, obsessive scholarly lives.Gissing is a great poet and sometimes a rather fine moralist.His pictures of London rival those of the Master (Dickens --and Dore).Don't miss him.Start with "Workers in the Dawn" and "The Nether World"--his passion more than compensates for his crudities.Remember:he was also a very accomplished classicist--more of a scholar than any other major Victorian novelist!A not insignificant fact.

Doesn't deserve obscurity
I recently read New Grub Street, and I must say I was stunned by how much I enjoyed it. Gissing's prose and characterization hold up remarkably well. He's sort of an urban Hardy, though far more accessible to today's reader. I'd recommend this to any serious reader. Oh, and this novel is ripe for adaptation. A BBC miniseries would be great.

Insightinto the Victorian Writing/Publishing Scene
I'm beginning to realize that George Gissing is an author who is relatively unknown by the general public but who is frequently studied/referenced by academics.The main reason why I think this is true (and this relates to the book at hand) is that Gissing himself had more of an academic temperament than a writing temperament.He was very adept at analyzing the world around him and commenting on it to a point of depressing realism, but he wasn't a storyteller.In fact, he struggled with creating enough storylines in order to support himself.Thus, while his books give impressive looks at Victorian life, they don't always leave a reader fully satisfied.

Why do I say this so confidently?Well, as Gissing was particularly self-aware and as he was particularly oppressed when writing "New Grub Street," in this novel he writes about what it's like to be a writer in London in the 1880's and 1890's.He essentially writes about his own life and those he find around him, all of whom are trying to make a living on writing.

Gissings seems to portray himself through the main character, Reardon. When the story opens, Reardon is struggling.His sophisticated wife is getting fed up with their impoverished lifestyle and with her husband's inability to write decent material.Reardon, a sensitive soul, is floundering under mounting pressure and stress.He is torn between his desire to write sophisticated, meaningful material and the public demand for "fluff."The more stressed laid on him, the less he is able to create and stick with any plausible fiction novel.He becomes more and more fererish and unable to work, and he is devastated as he loses his wife's love and respect.

Around this central character Reardon, Gissing builds a very full and weighty cast of characters.A small sampling of these characters are:
- The embittered, older column writer/reviewer, Yule, whose temperament has made so many enemies during his career that he is still laboring hard to support his small family at the end of his life.
- Yule's daugher, Marion, who is very clever but who is also very vulnerable.Her education has made her too good for many positions and marriages but her lack of money makes her a poor match for the educated class.
- Reardon's friend Milvain, who is an ambitious young man who has no problem writing exactly what the masses want.He knows his talents, he knows the market, and he knows his stuff won't last for posterity.But he is determined to live a comfortable life, make a strategic marriage and become a semi-respected man.
- Biffen, another friend of Reardon's, sympathizes most with Reardon's situation and condition.Two peas in a pod, these men spend long hours discuss meter, prose and ancient poetry.

I found myself continually amazed at Gissing's amazing ability to get into the head of many individuals in his large cast and to see how the world makes sense through each's eyes.Gissing also provides us with a wealth of information about the Victorian publishing scene.It was amazing to read that writers and publishers then were struggling with the same issues writers and publishers are struggling with today.

Additionally, Gissing gives you an unglorified look at poverty and the impoverished educated class of London at that time.While Dickens' works on the poor is idyllic and sentimental, Gissing simply relates the life he has known.There is nothing exceptional or amazing, and Gissing seems to argue that poverty takes character out of a man rather then build up a man's character.

Overall, I found this to be a fascinating piece...though perhaps a slow read.For those interested in publishing, writing, realistic portrayals of Victorian England, or other such topics, this is a fantastic work.

Whither Arnold's "Sweetness and Light?"
I found Jasper Milvain, the "alarmingly modern young man," to be the most interesting character in Gissing's New Grub Street for a number of reasons, the most significant of which is that he evinces what can only be considered a modernist's consciousness in his approach to writing.That is, while it soon becomes clear to the reader that Milvain represents the antithesis of what Edwin Reardon personifies-i.e., the work of literature as an emanation of author's native genius-and thus one of the intercalated plots of the novel involves the incremental success of Milvain as a modern man of letters, and the concomitant gradual abjection of Reardon.In a manner of speaking, then, Milvain and Reardon's fates emerge from a common source, namely some sea change in the reading public's (the consumer's) preferences and tendencies.

Milvain identifies as vulgar the most lucrative market for the product of the man of letter's labor.The vulgarians, or "quarter educated," drive the market (479), and since they have been determined to desire nothing more than chatty ephemera, they have successfully opened an insuperable gulf between material success in writing and artistic success.Reardon's psychologically penetrating novels just aren't in demand.Therefore, there emerges quite an interesting conceptual shift within the nascent hegemony of the quarter-educated as established by their purchasing power: what was once considered healthy artistic integrity has transmuted into a peculiar kind of petit bourgeois hubris, if, in the new paradigm, the writer is more an artisan than an artist.Therefore, Reardon's artistically-compromised and padded three-volume novel, written with no other end in mind than to pander to the vulgar reader, nonetheless achieves only modest success because, the fact that it is indistinguishable from countless other similar works glutting the market aside, his novel is infected from his irrepressible integrity, and thus his novel becomes a strange sort of counterfeit, a psychological narrative masquerading as a popular novel.Reardon thus becomes a sort of Coriolanus among writers.

Milvain, on the other hand, is a sort of Henry Ford among writers; he reveals his particular genius when offering advice to his sister Maud about how to write religious works for juveniles: "I tell you, writing is a business.Get together half-a-dozen fair specimens of the Sunday school prize; study them; discover the essential points of such a composition; hit upon new attractions; then go to work methodically, so many pages a day" (13).In other words, Jasper has managed to streamline and to mechanize the writing process.He studies previous works, abstracts formulae from them, isolates the elements of these formulae, and then deploys and rearranges these elements to give his own writing a patina of originality.By treating writing as an exercise in manipulating formulae, Jasper exchanges "authenticity" (whatever that word means anymore) for the convenience and efficiency of not having to grapple with his own potentially mutable and recalcitrant genius.Jasper did not invent writing, just as Ford did not invent the automobile.But like Ford did with automobile manufacture, Milvain discovers those aspects of writing that lend themselves to mechanical reproduction.Thus he is able to capitalize on his time and effort, and effectively becomes the very machine Reardon believes himself to be but never actually becomes because of his lingering notions of artistic integrity (352).

Also of interest is the fact that Albert Yule is a sort of synthesis of Milvain and Reardon.Like Milvain, Yule attempts to streamline his own literary production by delegating some of the labor to his daughter Marian.However, like Reardon, Yule clings to the superannuated notion of the necessary individuality of writing: "[h]is failings, obvious enough, were the results of a strong and somewhat pedantic individuality ceaselessly at conflict with unpropitious circumstances" (38).In other words, Yule fails to recognize the obsolescence of the lone, learned genius within the realm of literary production.A market of vulgarians who demand occasional literary confections simply does not expect Works of individual genius.Moreover, even if they were in demand, works of individual genius are too ponderously inefficient to keep pace with the rate at which they are consumed.Therefore, Yule straddles the either/or proposition personified by Reardon and Milvain: One may preserve his artistic integrity and write "for the ages"--hence Yule, Biffen, and Reardon's fetishization of Shakespeare, Coleridge and authors of classical antiquity--and starve in the process, or one may write "for the moment" and actually turn a respectable profit.

The shadow of Charles Darwin indeed looms large over the events and characters of New Grub Street. The growth market brought about by the advent of the "quarter-educated" vulgar class, and their discretionary income coupled with their callow aesthetic sensibilities and truncated attention spans, represents a nascent economic, if not ecological niche, for certain social creatures to occupy.However, it's not simply a matter of being able to adapt one's skills to the tastes of these consumers.One must also be a prodigious enough writer to keep pace with an equally prodigious rate of consumption.Individuals like Milvain and Whelpdale are adequately adapted to this niche in that they satisfy the demands of this niche in terms of both content and output.Reardon panders to the vulgar taste only grudgingly and after long resistance and thereby cannot meet the production demands of this niche.Biffen absolutely refuses to pander at all.Alfred Yule does attempt to pander, but his mode of literary production is too inefficient to meet production demands, and he is also largely ignorant of vulgar literary taste.While more in touch with the vulgar reader than her father, Marian Yule is as inefficient in her literary production as her father.Therefore, each of the characters named above are equally maladaptive, albeit for various reasons, and thus their extinction by the novel's end strikes the reader as somehow inevitable.Whereas Milvain and Reardon's widow Amy are left to come together as the triumphant niche occupants and thus reproduce themselves in their offspring, should they decide to produce any.

The Hateful Spirit of Literary Rancour
George Gissing's 1891 novel, "New Grub Street," is likely one of the most depressing books I've ever read.Certainly, in its descriptions of literary life, be it in publishing, or in my own realm of graduate scholarship, the situations, truths, and lives Gissing portrays are still all too relevant."New Grub Street" itself points to the timelessness of Gissing's portrayals - as Grub Street was synonymous, even in the eighteenth century with the disrepute of hack writing, and the ignominy of having to make a living by authorship.One of Gissing's primary laments throughout the novel is that the life of the mind is of necessity one which is socially isolating and potentially devastating to any kind of relationships, familial or otherwise."New Grub Street" gives us a world where friendship is never far from enmity, where love is never far from the most bitter kinds of hatred.

The anti-heroes of "New Grub Street" are presented to us as the novel begins - Jasper Milvain is a young, if somewhat impoverished, but highly ambitious man, eager to be a figure of influence in literary society at whatever cost.His friend, Edwin Reardon, on the other hand, was brought up on the classics, and toils away in obscurity, determined to gain fame and reputation through meaningful, psychological, and strictly literary fiction.Family matters beset the two - Jasper has two younger sisters to look out for, and Edwin has a beautiful and intelligent wife, who has become expectant of Edwin's potential fame.Throw into the mix Miss Marian Yule, daughter of a declining author of criticism, whose own reputation was never fully realized, and who has indentured his daughter to literary servitude, and we have a pretty list of discontented and anxious people struggling in the cut-throat literary marketplace of London.

Money is of supreme importance in "New Grub Street," and it would be pointless to write a review without making note of it.As always, the literary life is one which is not remunerative for the mass of people who engage upon it, and this causes no end of strife in the novel.As Milvain points out, the paradox of making money in the literary world is that one must have a well-known reputation in order to make money from one's labours.At the same time, one must have money in order to move in circles where one's reputation may be made.This is the center of the novel's difficulties - should one or must one sacrifice principles of strictly literary fame and pander to a vulgar audience in order to simply survive?The question is one in which Reardon finds the greatest challenges to his marriage, his self-esteem, and even his very existence.For Jasper Milvain and his sisters, as well as for Alfred and Marian Yule, there is no question that the needs of subsistence outweigh most other considerations.

"New Grub Street" profoundly questions the relevance of classic literature and high culture to the great mass of people, and by proxy, to the nation itself.For England, which propagated its sense of international importance throughout the nineteenth century by encouraging the study of English literature in its colonial holdings, the matter becomes one of great significance.The careers of Miss Dora Milvain and Mr. Whelpdale, easily the novel's two most charming, endearing, and sympathetic characters, attempt to illustrate the ways in which modern literature may be profitable to both the individual who writes it and the audiences towards which they aim.They may be considered the moral centers of the novel, and redeem Gissing's work from being entirely fatalistic.

"New Grub Street" is a novel that will haunt me for quite some time.As a "man of letters" myself, I can only hope that the novel will serve as an object lesson, and one to which I may turn in hope and despair.The novel is well written, its characters and situations drawn in a very realistic and often sympathetic way.Like the ill-fated "ignobly decent" novel of Mr. Biffen's, "Mr. Bailey, Grocer," "New Grub Street" may seem less like a novel, and more like a series of rambling biographical sketches, but they are indelible and lasting sketches of literary lives as they were in the original Grub Street, still yet in Gissing's time, and as they continue to-day.Very highly recommended. ... Read more