In 1897, at age nineteen, American Brian Boru Dunne was an aspiring journalist, who chanced to meet the Englishman George Gissing at the height of his career as a novelist. He was somewhat awed, but not unduly intimidated, by the renowned writer, and his vigorous personality drew Gissing into many frank and unguarded conversations. Stored away until after Dunne's death, his fully wrought memoirs of these conversations and the description of their meetings are the essence of this finely edited volume.
During their months together in Rome, sometimes in the company of Conan Doyle and H. G....