New Grub Street

By George Gissiing

Classic novel.According to Wikipedia: "George Robert Gissing (November 22, 1857 – December 28, 1903) was an English novelist who wrote twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era. ... In 1880 when his first novel, Workers in the Dawn, proved to be an abject failure, he became a private tutor to keep poverty from the door. In 1883, he separated from his wife, now an alcoholic, but gave her a weekly income on what little money he had until her death in 1888. In 1884 his second novel, The Unclassed, which saw a marked improvement in style and characterisation, met with moderate critical acclaim. After this Gissing published novels almost on a yearly basis, but so little money did they bring him, that for several more years he had to continue working as a tutor. Although notoriously exploited by his publishers, he was able to visit Italy in 1889 from the sale of the copyright of The Nether World, his most pessimistic book. Between 1891 and 1897 (his so-called middle period) Gissing produced his best works, which include New Grub Street, Born in Exile, The Odd Women, In the Year of Jubilee, and The Whirlpool. In advance of their time, they variously deal with the growing commercialism of the literary market, religious charlatanism, the situation of emancipated women in a male-dominated society, the poverty of the working classes, and marriage in a decadent world. During this period, having belatedly become aware of the financial rewards of writing short stories for the press, he produced almost seventy stories. As a result he was able to give up teaching. ... The middle years of the decade saw Gissing's reputation reach new heights: by some critics he is counted alongside George Meredith and Thomas Hardy as one of the best three novelists of his day. He also enjoyed new friendships with fellow writers such as Henry James, and H.G. Wells, and came into contact with many other up and coming writers such as Joseph Conrad and Stephen Crane. ... In 1903 Gissing published The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, which brought him much acclaim. This is his most autobiographical work. It is the memoir of the last happy years of a writer who had struggled much like Gissing, but thanks to a late legacy had been able to give up writing to retire to the countryside."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seltzer Books
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781455355648

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Reviews for New Grub Street

[patrickgarson_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This tale of literary paupers deals with poverty in an atypically clear-eyed way, but Gissing does have some weaknesses playing against this strength. Pity those educated without means; forbidden from pursuing humble but lucrative occupations (and not content with them, anyway), yet clinging to respectability by the slimmest of margins. The caustic effects of poverty can destroy those with a weak constitution, those like Edward Reardon, the sensitive novelist who needs to take a leaf from the book of his ambitious friend Jasper. New Grub Street catalogues the incestuous London literary scene, using Jasper and Edward as fulcrums for its story. The threat of poverty is omnipresent in the novel, but not in cariacuture, as Dickens was wont to slip into, or grand guignol like Zola. It's real, it's visibility, and its disturbingly close when one indifferent book or bad review can sideline a career. Gissing's own experiences in this sub-culture give the book a veracity that can't be denied, and his sympathy for the characters - "good" and "bad" alike, gives the book a modulation that can be missing in Victorian novels. Jasper, Edward, and everyone in their circle may be infuriating, but they are always understandable, and their desperation and fears are well-grounded. The novel is propelled almost wholly through dialogue. Gissing has a gift for it, but it can give the book a skeletal feel at times, and if you don't respond to dialogue-heavy books, think twice. As a corollary to this, the narrative does stutter a little at points, predominantly because anyone familiar with Victorian novels will see a few, heavily foreshadowed developments a long way off. Thankfully, Gissing engenders a warm sympathy with his very human characters, and even if you know where they are headed, spending time with them is no chore. An interesting and worthy addition to the Victorian canon.

[schmerguls · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I found this late Victorian novel worth reading but confess i found the main character's whining non-attractive.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

New Grub Street presents in a realistic narrative, the contemporary working conditions of a new class, the professional author. George Gissing, born the son of a chemist in 1857, was as an author breaking important new ground, as well as responding to significant cultural change in the literary generation after Dickens and Thackeray. His naturalistic style provides an urban alternative to the rural novels of Thomas Hardy.The eponymous hero of David Copperfield is also a writer, but Dickens focuses primarily, and in some detail, on Copperfield's childhood, not his career as a novelist. He does not delve into the gritty world and threadbare texture of Victorian literary life. This may be partly due to the social and cultural upheavals inspired by changes in the culture of British education in the latter decades of the Victorian era. George Gissing's career as a man of letters was the product of this. For the rest of the century, the lives of writers and readers would undergo a profound transformation which would permanently reshape the British literary landscape. Henceforth, high and low literary culture would increasingly diverge. This is one of the main themes in John Carey's important critical study The Intellectuals and the Masses. It is also the animating idea of New Grub Street.Gissing was hardly alone in finding the role and conduct of the modern writer an urgent topic in late Victorian literary London. A year before New Grub Street, Henry James also published a novel, The Tragic Muse, about "the conflict between art and 'the world'", though James focused on painting and the stage more than literature. Even in our era with the internet revolution promoting another paradigm shift, Gissing's subject remains as topical as ever, and addresses timeless themes in the everyday life of the full-time, professional writer.In New Grub Street, the narrative is set in the literary world with which Gissing himself was intimately familiar; the title refers to the London street that, in the eighteenth century world of Samuel Johnson and Laurence Sterne, was synonymous with hack writing. By the 1890s, Grub Street no longer existed, though hack writing, of course, never goes away, with timeless imperatives. As one character puts it: "Our Grub Street of today is supplied with telegraphic communications, it knows what literary fare is in demand in every part of the world, its inhabitants are men of business, however seedy." (p 9)The novel's protagonists are a contrasted pair of writers: thoughtful Edwin Reardon, a shy "literary" novelist with few commercial prospects; and Jasper Milvain, a hard-driving young journalist who treats his writing as the means to an end in a ruthless literary marketplace. "I speak," he says, "only of good, marketable stuff for the world's vulgar." Reardon will face continual difficulties while Milvain will flourish in literary London ("I write for the upper-middle-class of intellect, the people who like to feel that what they are reading has some special cleverness").New Grub Street is Victorian in its realist depiction of a society in transition, but modern in the way it harks forward to the imminent new century with its portrait of the artist as an existential character making his solitary way in the world. For example Reardon ponders on memories of moments with his wife Amy on their honeymoon, remembering their voices:"The voices seemed to be lingering still, in a sad, faint echo, so short a time it was since those words were uttered.His own fault. A man has no business to fail; least of all can he expect others to have time to look back upon him or pity him if he sink under the stress of conflict. Those behind will trample over his body; they can't help it; they themselves are borne onwards by resistless pressure." (p 212)The resistless pressure of life is ultimately too much for Gissing's sad protagonist. He is like the hero of Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy's final novel; Jude Fawley is a working-class boy who dreams of becoming an Oxford scholar. Hardy's Jude is Reardon's West Country equivalent. While Gissing's natural world is depressing his literary depiction of it is brilliant - a truly great novel.

[welshwoman_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A great classic which continues to resonate even today. Gissing always strikes me as a really modern author; poverty, greed, money, sex, sexual equality (or the lack of it), love, lust - all of these are subjects with which we can identify.

[ganeshaka · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Once upon a time - a few centuries ago - "Grub Street" was an enclave in London, on the fringes of the publishing industry. Amid the coffeehouses and cheap lodgings, wannabe writers congregated...some to starve in garrets, some to hack (eek!) out a living, and one or two, like Pope and Johnson, to find fame.Fast forward to the late 1880s. "New" Grub Street is George Gissing's contemporary rendering of the Darwinisms of the same industry - and of marriage. True to life, and almost a roman a clef.In fact, you might skip all the way forward to the 21st Century, and channel hop through episodes of Survivor, The Bachelor, and The Apprentice, to get a flavor of the plot lines of New Grub Street.Jasper Milvain is an ambitious young journalist, of limited finances, with an eye for women's bottoms...bottom lines. He is responsible for the success of himself and his two younger sisters. As he readily, too readily, admits, he'll marry for money, if that's what it takes to further his career, even if he has to wait til he's fifty. He's tripped up a bit, however, by his admiration and attraction for Marian Yule, who lacks, only, money.Edwin Reardon is all "ars gratia artis". He refuses to feel comfortable writing merely for lucre. But he's burdened by a young son, and worse, a wife who married him, in large part, for his snob appeal as a serious artist. Overwhelmed by the pressure for product, his imagination falters and he's challenged to try his hand at pulp.Toss in a circle of literary friends and fringe authors, and the Yule family (which holds out the hope of emotional and financial rescue)...you now have a crackling fire in the fine bones of a Victorian mansion. Can Masterpiece Theatre be far behind?As it was then, is now, and shall ever after be...where there's a will, there's a way...if the estate has a good executor! If not, there's always Social Darwinism, and its comforting adage "If your shoes fit, you will survive...".

[markbstephenson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely Phenomenal- straight from the heart- writers Reardon and Milvain are great foils for each other and the Victorian literary scene.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This very long classic is an interesting look at the lives of struggling writers during the Victorian era. What I found fascinating, is that the writers fell into 3 categories: successful 'literary' writers, writers who made a living by churning out articles and books that would appeal to the masses, and writers who wrote carefully crafted works, but either lacked talent, or were never discovered, and basically were starving artists. In many ways, the art of writing has not changed. Today, we have those few successful literary writers who might win recognition with Pulitzers, Mann Booker awards, or other coveted prizes. And then there are those financially successful writers who churn out many books a year and have a staff of writing assistants who help them produce these instant best sellers. But the majority of writers, go unrecognized and do not make money. The only thing that has changed from Gissing's era is that now people can be self-published pretty easily. Although I found the topic interesting, I thought the flow of this book was slow and it lacked the charm or emotional tug of a Trollope or a Dickens. I don't know why this is on the list of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die; I could have skipped this one, but, at least it's checked off.

[lucienspringer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Conventional wisdom describes the Victorian era as a golden age of literature, when novelists such as Dickens and Eliot could produce work that was both lasting and lucrative, work that intelligently plumbed the depths of human character and entertainingly splashed in the shallows of high society. Those who love the triple-decker masterpieces of this era may well enjoy this briefer work that illuminates the conditions under which those masters labored. Gissing's juxtaposed tales of success and failure are an excellent reminder of the ways in which his time was much like our own; then, as now, glibness and topicality paid the rent better than integrity and truth. His characters, like us but unlike most literary figures, think daily about their economic constraints and possibilities. By the end of "New Grub Street," we know all too well the price art exacts on the heart and on the pocketbook. Gissing's view may focus on the rougher side of his profession, but the flaws his harsh light exposes on the Victorian antiques make them seem all the more human and all the more valuable.

[beavermeyer · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Man, this book is powerful and emotional. It sucks you in and drags you into the depths of this agonizing world. I absolutely loved it and I will get around to reading it again someday. I hope.

[bjbookman · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

First read this novel around 1974. I never forgot this novel, it was my first introduction to George Gissing. I have just re-read it and all the memories I felt then, came back to me.One of my favorite Victorian novel and author.Another five stars from me.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a story that encompasses changes in the art of writing. Paper is becoming easier to make and print and books are able to be marketed to the "vulgar". The story contrasts the writer who is till trying to be literary and the one that writes to "make money". It also explores the plight of females and their efforts to be more independent and make a living. I enjoy the author's writing. This is the second book by him and it is the last of the books that Gissing has on the 1001 list.