Paul Johnson
On New Grub Street
George Gissing: A Life
By Paul Delany
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 472pp £25
George Gissing (1857–1903) was a skilful writer with a thorough knowledge of and love for the classics in Greek, Latin and English. He wrote the first modern critical appraisal of Dickens and his By the Ionian Sea is the best book on Italy ever written by an Englishman (with the exception of Norman Douglas’s Old Calabria – both books, oddly enough, being about the little-visited toe and heel). But he was principally a writer of fiction, producing twenty-two volumes in his lifetime and leaving others in manuscript form for posthumous publication. His overarching theme is the horror of being an intelligent and sensitive male of the English lower middle class, hampered always by lack of money and sexual frustration. This gives his work a peculiarly modern sociological interest, and he has received an enormous amount of attention in the last fifty years. His New Grub Street has become a classic, most of his other novels have been reprinted, his letters and diaries have been published, and there have been biographies. A bibliography, sure sign of a writer’s canonisation, came out in 2005.
Paul Delany, author of this new life, is well equipped for his task, having already produced a study of writers and money in modern England. He has written a full-scale, industrious and sensible work, of great interest to anyone anxious to get under the skin of literature and probe the
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
When @djbduncan notices the text for a literary jigsaw puzzle had been written by a former colleague, his head spins. A wild surmise. Are jigsaws REF-able?
Dennis Duncan - The W Factor
Dennis Duncan: The W Factor
literaryreview.co.uk
In an effort to scold drinkers, Victorian temperance societies furiously marked every drinking establishment with a red X on city maps. It was a spectacular case of propaganda backfiring.
@foxtosser explores the history of drink maps
Edward Brooke-Hitching - From Beer Street to Gin Lane
Edward Brooke-Hitching: From Beer Street to Gin Lane - Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler
literaryreview.co.uk
How did a workers’ insurance agent who died of tuberculosis at the age of forty become a global literary icon?
@MortenHoiJensen on Kafka's metamorphosis
Morten Høi Jensen - Paranoid Humanoid
Morten Høi Jensen: Paranoid Humanoid - Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka by Karolina Watroba; Kafka: Making o...
literaryreview.co.uk