George Gissing

George Gissing at his writing desk.

George 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.

Naturalism was a late nineteenth century movement that evolved from Realism. Realism focused on the description of the details of everyday existence as an expression of the social milieu of the characters. In naturalist literature the subjects changed to primarily people of lower birth. Within the genre, writers such as Gissing concentrated on society's seamier side and the travails of the lower classes. This became the focal point of their writing. In the nineteenth century, Naturalism was heavily influenced by Marxism and evolutionary theory, such as Darwinism. As a means of criticizing late nineteenth century social organization, Gissing and his contemporaries attempted to apply the scientific rigor and insights of those two theories to artistic representation of society.

Biography

Early life

Born on November 22, 1857, in Wakefield, Yorkshire, to lower-middle class parents, George Gissing's father was a chemist who died young leaving five children. His siblings were William, who died aged twenty; Algernon, who became a writer; Margaret; and Ellen Gissing went on to win a scholarship to Owens College, the present day University of Manchester. A brilliant student, George excelled at university, winning many coveted prizes, including the Shakespeare prize in 1875.

When it looked as if he would go on to gain even more distinguished honors as a student and as an academic, he fell in love with a prostitute, Marianne Helen Harrison. As he lacked the means to support her himself, Gissing began to steal from his fellow students. At length, he was caught, convicted of theft, and forced to leave the university; he was sentenced to one month's hard labor in prison. In October 1876, thanks largely to a few local sympathizers, he was shipped off to the United States, where, when close to starvation, he managed to earn a precarious living by writing short stories for the Chicago Tribune.

Literary career

On returning to England in the autumn of 1877, Gissing married Marianne and settled down in London to write novels. 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 novel, The Unclassed, which saw a marked improvement in style and characterization, met with moderate critical acclaim. After this Gissing published novels almost on a yearly basis, but his work brought him so little money that for several more years he had to continue working as a tutor. Gissing spent time reading classical authors at the British Museum Reading Room and took long walks through the streets of London observing the poor. In his reading, John Forster's Life of Dickens particularly interested him 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. Among the early practitioners of the school of literature known as naturalism, his novels 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.

In February 1891, he had married another working-class woman named Edith Underwood and moved to Exeter. Despite the marital difficulties (Edith was prone to fits of violence and mental instability) they had two children together. After several more moves, Gissing separated from Edith in 1897, leaving his children with his sisters in Wakefield; in 1902, Edith was certified insane.

Later years

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 three best 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. He made a second trip to Italy in 1897-1898, and also visited Greece. Towards the end of the nineties his health declined—he was eventually diagnosed with emphysema—so that he had to stay at a sanatorium from time to time. In 1898, he met Gabrielle Fleury, a Frenchwoman who had approached him in order to translate one of his novels, and fell in love with her. The following year they took part in a private marriage ceremony in Rouen, even though Gissing had been unable to obtain a divorce from Edith, and from then on they lived in France as a couple.

Gissing died on December 28, 1903, aged forty-six from the effects of emphysema, after having caught a chill on an ill-advised winter walk. At his death he left one unfinished novel, Veranilda, which is set in Rome during the sixth century. Gissing is buried in the English cemetery at Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

Works

After settling in London, Gissing's career as a fiction writer began with his failure to get his first novel Workers in the Dawn accepted by a publisher. He published it privately, funding it with money from an inheritance. Gissing's next novel, Mrs Grundy's Enemies, remained unpublished like the first, although bought for publication by Bentley & Son in 1882. George Bentley decided against publishing it despite revisions that Gissing made.

His next novel, The Unclassed, was published in 1884. The years after its publication brought great literary activity. Isabel Clarendon and Demos appeared in 1886. With Demos began a relationship with Smith, Elder & Co., which published him until New Grub Street in 1891. The novels he wrote in this period depict a conservative view of the working class. Gissing used £150 earned from the rights to The Nether World in 1889 to fund a long-awaited trip to Italy to pursue his interest in the classics. His experiences there formed a basis for the 1890 work The Emancipated.

Gissing's work began to be paid better. New Grub Street was published in 1891 and brought him £250. Set in the literary and journalistic circles of late-1800s London, the title, New Grub Street, alludes to the London street, Grub Street, which in the eighteenth century became synonymous with the "hack writing" that pervades Gissing's novel; Grub Street itself was no longer extant when Gissing was writing.

The novel contrasts Edwin Reardon, a congenitally un-commercial but talented writer, against Jasper Milvain, a selfish and unscrupulous hack who rejects artistic endeavor for material gain. Milvain's trite, manipulative work ascends while Reardon's work—and his life—spiral downward. The novel suggests that the literary world rewards materialistic self-promotion more than serious artistic sensibility. Gissing's biography—a respected writer who struggled for a long time to obtain commercial success—strongly suggests the novel is autobiographical.

In 1892 he befriended and was influenced in his work by a fellow writer, George Meredith. In the 1890s, Gissing lived more comfortably on his earnings. Novels from the period include Born in Exile (1892), The Odd Women (1893), In the Year of Jubilee (1894) and The Whirlpool (1897). From 1893, Gissing also wrote short stories, some of which were collected in an 1898 volume, Human Odds and Ends, and others in volumes published after his death. In 1895, he published three novellas, Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest and Sleeping Fires. This too reflected changing tastes in the reading public, away from three-volume novels.

Gissing revisited Italy in 1897–1898, as told in a travel book, By the Ionian Sea (1901). While in Siena he wrote Charles Dickens: a Critical Study. In Rome he met H. G. Wells and his wife and did research for a romantic novel set in the sixth century, Veranilda, which was unfinished when he died and published incompletely in 1904. Meanwhile The Town Traveller was published.

In July 1898, Gissing met Gabrielle Marie Edith Fleury (1868–1954), a Frenchwoman who approached him for permission to translate New Grub Street. Gissing's relations with Fleury provided inspiration for his 1899 novel The Crown of Life. He wrote several novels more novels, including Among the Prophets, which remained unpublished and has not survived, Our Friend the Charlatan (1901) and Will Warburton (published posthumously in 1905). In 1903, he published The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, written in 1900–1901 and appearing initially as a serial entitled "An author at grass" in the Fortnightly Review. It consists of imaginary autobiographical essays from a once-struggling writer who has inherited a legacy enabling him to retire in the countryside. It brought Gissing much acclaim.

Apart from fiction, Gissing followed up his study of Dickens with further writings, including introductions to editions of Dickens' works, articles for journals, and a revised edition of John Forster's Dickens biography.

Legacy

George Gissing was a prolific writer publishing two dozen novels during his lifetime as well as an important critical study of Charles Dickens, a somewhat unsentimental look at the sentimental novelist.

Gissing's early novels were ill-received, but greater recognition came in the 1890s in England and overseas. The increased popularity affected his novels, the short stories he wrote in the period, and his friendships with influential, respected literary figures such as the journalist Henry Norman, author J. M. Barrie, and writer and critic Edmund Gosse. By the end of the century, critics placed him with Thomas Hardy and George Meredith as one of the three leading novelists in England.

Chesterton saw in him the "soundest of the Dickens critics, a man of genius." George Orwell admired him and in an article written in 1948, published posthumously in 1960, Orwell stated his opinion that "Everything of Gissing's — except perhaps one or two books written towards the end of his life — contains memorable passages. ... merely on the strength of New Grub Street, Demos and The Odd Women I am ready to maintain that England has produced very few better novelists."

Works

• Workers in the Dawn (1880)
• The Unclassed (1884)
• Isabel Clarendon (1885)
• Demos (1886)
• Thyrza (1887)
• A Life's Morning (1888)
• The Nether World (1889)
• The Emancipated (1890)
• New Grub Street (1891)
• Denzil Quarrier (1892)
• Born In Exile (1892)
• The Odd Women (1893)
• In the Year of Jubilee (1894)
• Eve's Ransom (1895)
• The Paying Guest (1895)
• Sleeping Fires (1895)
• The Whirlpool (1897)
• The Town Traveller (1898)
• Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1898)
• The Crown Of Life (1899)
• By the Ionian Sea (1901)
• Our Friend the Charlatan (1901)
• The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903)
• Will Warburton (1905)
• Veranilda (1903, unfinished)
• Stories and Sketches (posthumous, 1938) with preface by Alfred C. Gissing

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Chesterton, G. K. Charles Dickens: A Critical Study. Anson Street Press, 2025 (original 1906). ISBN 978-1023555722
• Keahey, John. A Sweet and Glorious Land: Revisiting the Ionian Sea. T. Dunne Press, 2000. ISBN 0312242050
• Korg, Jacob. George Gissing: A Critical Biography. University of Washington Press, 1980. ISBN 978-0295956794
• Selig, Robert L. George Gissing. Prentice Hall International, 1995. ISBN 9780805770612.
• Swinnerton, Frank. George Gissing A Critical Study. Nabu Press, 2010 (original 1912). ISBN 978-1177783392

External links

All links retrieved April 29, 2026.

• Works by or about George Gissing Internet Archive
• Works by George Gissing. Project Gutenberg (plain text and HTML)
• Remembering George Gissing by Judy Stove, The New Criterion, February 2004.
• George Gissing Find a Grave

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