Alice and Virginia Madden, suddenly left adrift by the death of their improvident father, must take grinding and humiliating "genteel" work. Terrified of sharing their fate, their younger sister Monica accepts a proposal of marriage from a man who gives her financial security but makes her life wretched Interwoven with their fortunes are Mary Barfoot and Rhoda Nunn, who are dedicating their lives to training young women in skills they can use to support themselves. Their broader aim is to help free both sexes from whatever distorts or depletes their humanity--including, if necessary,...

For many years, the only Gissing letters available to the public were those in the modest selection of letters to his family published in 1927. In the following years a good number were published separately in such places as journals, memoirs, and sales catalogues, but like the single and small groups of unpublished letters scattered in libraries around the world, they remained in practical terms inaccessible. Even though in recent years small groups of letters to individual correspondents have come into print, the rapidly growing numbers of Gissing readers and scholars now feel the need for...

Gissing's career, which spanned the period of about 1877 to his death in 1903, was characterized by prodigious output (almost a novel a year in the early days), modest recognition, and modest income. He wrote of poverty, socialism, class differences, social reform, and later on, about the problems of women and industrialization. His best known works are New Grub Street (1891) and Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), rich sources of social commentary that reflect a literary transition from the Victorian to the modern period.

For many years, the only Gissing letters...

Gissing's career, which spanned the period of about 1877 to his death in 1903, was characterized by prodigious output (almost a novel a year in the early days), modest recognition, and modest income. He wrote of poverty, socialism, class differences, social reform, and later on, about the problems of women and industrialization. His best known works are "New Grub Street" (1891) and "Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft" (1903), rich sources of social commentary that reflect a literary transition from the Victorian to the modern period.
For many years, the only Gissing letters available to the...

Gissing's career, which spanned the period of about 1877 to his death in 1903, was characterized by prodigious output (almost a novel a year in the early days), modest recognition, and modest income. He wrote of poverty, socialism, class differences, social reform, and later on, about the problems of women and industrialization. His best known works are "New Grub Street" (1891) and "Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft" (1903), rich sources of social commentary that reflect a literary transition from the Victorian to the modern period.
For many years, the only Gissing letters available to the...

For many years, the only Gissing letters available to the public were those in the modest selection of letters to his family published in 1927. In the following years a good number were published separately in such places as journals, memoirs, and sales catalogues, but like the single and small groups of unpublished letters scattered in libraries around the world, they remained in practical terms inaccessible. Even though in recent years small groups of letters have come into print, the rapidly growing numbers of Gissing readers and scholars now feel the need for access to his letters in an...

This ninth volume concludes the widely-acclaimed edition of "The Collected Letters of George Gissing," which not only renders obsolete all other collections and selections of his letters, but also contains a considerable quantity of hitherto unpublished or inaccessible materials. If Gissing was a rather less assiduous letter-writer in 1902 and 1903, largely owing to the deterioration of his health, he nonetheless remained in touch with a number of major writers of the period such as Wells, Conrad, and Hardy, whose last letter to him, unavailable until now to biographers and editors, are...

For many readers New Grub Street is Gissing's masterpiece. If this is not accepted, it remains beyond doubt one of his most interesting and most powerful novels. As a realistic picture of the literary in late Victorian England, New Grub Street has few rivals. There is much of Gissing himself, his idealism, pride, impracticality, in Edwin Reardon the study of the creative artist oppressed by poverty bears the stamp of bitter experience. Of the other characters, pedantic Alfred Yule, the humble scholar Biffen, ambitious and worldly Jasper Milvain are still recognizable literary types. New Grub...

Here is the book in which Gissing, for once, turned away from the sombre and care-laden scenes that dominated his outlook as a novelist, and painted at first hand a picture of that classic South whose art and literature and living sense of beauty were the hidden mainspring of his being. Appreciation of Gissing's genius is steadily growing, and these finely polished sketches of travel reflect an essential part of his experience. With an Introduction by Virginia WoolfKeywords: Virginia Woolf Novelist Sketches Appreciation Genius Literature Art