New Grub Street
Written by George Gissing
Narrated by Peter Joyce
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
One of the greatest novels to have come from the 19th Century, a realistic gritty exposure of the lives, loves, intrigue and rivalry that existed in the literary world of London. The art form and culture of writing is becoming a business, expanding rapidly, and profit is more important than integrity of purpose.
In the search for a wider readership, editors and publishers look to the poorer educated classes believing that shorter, slighter commercial treatments will sell and thus erudite writers with serious ideas and "urgent messages for the world" have their work devalued.
"Instead of Chat I should call it Chit-Chat….it would sell like hot cakes. On the same principle…….if the Tatler were changed to Tittle-Tattle it’s circulation would be trebled…An admirable idea! Tittle-Tattle -a magnificent title; the very thing to catch the multitude."
The downward intellectual spiral is, of course, contrasted by the progress of lightweight, jobbing writers able to turn their pen, with ease, to any task and supply copy with trite, popular appeal.
Gissing knew his subject well and his characterisation of the facile, unscrupulous Milvain, the rancorous Yule, the paranoid and impoverished Reardon all have the note of authenticity as do the women used and abused by them in their struggle for success and the publication of their work.
Truly one of the books from which we should learn, monumental in the telling, the story is an engrossing tale, describing a shabby Pyrrhic victory, at the expense of all those with a reasoning mind, of self advertisement over artistic endeavour in an ongoing war- of what happens when pen meets penury.
This story will capture and uplift the hearts of every listener.
George Gissing
George Gissing (1857-1903) was an English novelist. Born in Yorkshire, he excelled as a student from a young age, earning a scholarship to Owens College where he won prizes for his poetry and academic writing. Expelled and arrested for a series of thefts in 1876, Gissing was forced to leave England for the United States, teaching classics and working as a short story writer in Massachusetts and Chicago. The following year, he returned to England and embarked on a career as a professional novelist, publishing works of naturalism inspired by his experience of poverty and the works of Charles Dickens. After going through an acrimonious divorce, Gissing remarried in 1891 and entered a turbulent relationship with Edith Alice Underwood, with whom he raised two children before separating in 1897. During this time, after writing several unpublished novels, Gissing found success with New Grub Street (1891), Born in Exile (1892), and The Odd Women (1893). In the last years of his life, Gissing befriended H.G. Wells and travelled throughout Italy, Germany, and France, where he died after falling ill during a winter walk.
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Reviews for New Grub Street
11 ratings3 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It was unclear to me till the very end what the author intended as a message. There were so many ups and downs for our characters, but in the end, the new mercantile approach to providing literary content (quantity over quality, my dear fellow!) in late 19th century, London, wins out and paves the way to the future.
He dwelt excessively,I thought, on privation and misery in the lives of his characters. It did get wearing, but the story with his wealth of detail on London at that time held my attention and I was compelled by the thoughts and feelings of his characters. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I've never read a classic with characters as wonderful as these!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Characters were well developed and unlike Dickens the ending was not a happy one but I was satisfied and surprised pleasingly