New Grub Street

George Gissing (1857-1903) was an English novelist of the late-Victorian era. Gissing's career as a novelist, at least until the late twentieth century, has been assessed in the framework of the nineteenth century realism and naturalism. Like many writers at the end of the nineteenth century, he was caught between the sociological realists with reform instincts and the adherents of an aesthetic movement with their emphasis on the attainment of ideal beauty. Gissing never achieved fame or the fortune that he would have liked, but was nevertheless seriously reviewed and often applauded by the critics for his objective treatment of social conditions in England. "New Grub Street," Gissing's most highly regarded novel, is the story of men and women forced to make their living by writing. Gissing presents their broken dreams and daily lives made and marred by the rigors of urban life and the demands of the fledgling mass communications industry with vivid realism and cynical sympathy.