Born in Exile

By George Gissing

Will update

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sheba Blake Publishing
• Release date: Nov 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312577572

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 During this time, after writing several unpublished novels, Gissing found success with New Grub Street (1891), Born in Exile (1892), and The Odd Women (1893).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.

Reviews for Born in Exile

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Read this for Reading 1001 BOTM, September. This book was written by George Gissing, British author, written in 1892. It is a story of a young man who is smart and longs to be of a different class than that which he was born and he views himself as born in exile as he believes he belongs to this other class. It is the story of his struggles, his alienation and the sense that he was always a lodger and never at home. His attitude is aptly presented with these quotes"the squalling mass-obscene herd of idiot mockers". In this novel that looks at class structure and the whether there is fluidity to climb higher or are you fated to always be what you were born. I do think it is hard to take the "thinking and cultural mores" out of the person who is born or raised in a lower structure and does change. That early life event is always part of ones history. Our protagonist could not find any peace, he could not accept his humble background. He lives in shame and then he created a deception and this deception was what really destroyed him, not his humble origins. The book also explored happiness. Is happiness promoted by intelligence and moral principles?, Is happiness the conscious exertion of individual powers (do we choose to be happy or melancholy and discontent)?"Then you are incapable of happiness in any worthy sense? You may graze but you will never feast.". Themes of the book are loss, religion, love, marriage. This book thoroughly explored intelligence vs faith (religion). It explored many issues still relevant today. Politically, people still call people of faith "stupid, illiterate, idiots" and feel there can be no redeeming qualities of intelligence in the man of faith. It explores the erosion of faith by people of education who alter the dogmas to fit the "social demands".