Rhoda Nunn, a childhood friend of the Misses Madden. Rhoda Nunn and her friend Mary Barfoot run an institution in Great Portland Street, and their lifework is to teach young women the skills they weren't normally taught at the time: self-reliance, independence, and specific job qualifications such as typing and how to do clerical work; all so that marriage didn't have to remain their only option. Rhoda Nunn reminded me of the women I read about in Singled Out, as it's very much her belief that a single woman's life doesn't have to be one of emptiness and misery. There are actually many other...

Gissing brings to life the bitter battles (fought out in obscure garrets or in the Reading Room of the British Museum) between integrity and the dictates of the market place, the miseries of genteel poverty and the damage that failure and hardship do to human personality and relationships.

Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide.

A novel of social realism, The Odd Women reflects the major sexual and cultural issues of the late nineteenth century. Unlike the "New Woman" novels of the era which challenged the idea that the unmarried woman was superfluous, Gissing satirizes that image and portrays women as "odd" and marginal in relation to an ideal.

This tale of intrigue depicts life among the artisans, factory-girls, and slum-dwellers, documenting an inescapable world devoid of sentimentality and steeped with people scheming and struggling to survive.