George Gissing

An exploration of the class struggle in nineteenth century London where a potential inheritance turns family and friends into desperate foes eager to escape their circumstance. A compelling story about greed, deception and the innate need to survive. Michael Snowdon lives like a pauper despite inheriting a massive fortune. He plans to leave his money to Jane, his neglected granddaughter, in hopes that she will spend it on charitable causes. Yet, Michael's...

The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903) is a semi-autobiographical work by George Gissing. Published in the last year of his life, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft is presented as a diary of a friend discovered after the man's premature death. Divided into four seasons, the diary details the life of a man overwhelmed with depression and regretful of a past mired in unsuccessful work. With a mournful, meditative preface, George Gissing introduces...

The author of New Grub Street turns to farce in this 1898 novel, one of his most popular during his lifetime. Our hero, Gammon, tangles with his landlady Mrs. Bubb, the shady detective Greenacre, the bigamous Lord Polperro, and young Polly Sparkes, caught up in a rollicking chase about London on New Year's Eve.

Charles Dickens: A Critical Study was written in Siena, Italy in 1897 and first published by Blackie in the Victorian Era Series in February 1898. Any doubts that readers and critics harboured over the choice of Gissing as author were swept aside on the book's publication. It was hailed as a triumphant feat of original and incisive criticism allied to level-headed conclusions. Literature, the forerunner of the Times Literary Supplement, described...

"Our Friend the Charlatan" is a 1901 novel by British novelist George Gissing. The story follows Dice Lashmore, a man who will do anything he can to get rich. However, it seems to him that the most obvious thing he could do to that end would be to find a rich wife. A thought-provoking chronicle of his various attempts at courtship and eventual moral decline, "Our Friend the Charlatan" is not to be missed by fans and collectors of Gissing's seminal...

Harvey Rolfe lives quietly on his modest inheritance at the fringe of London's social and commercial life, but tumultuous events bring Alma Frothingham into his orbit. Their contentment doesn't last long. Harvey's inability to see Alma as merely selfish rather than an emancipated "new woman," turns this story into a tale of a marriage poisoned by sexual jealousy and deceit.

Richard Mutimer is a young lower-class working-man who unexpectedly inherits a large fortune. He becomes the leader of a socialist movement and decides to use his inheritance to set up a cooperative factory. However, his new wealth and power serve to highlight the defects of his character and he begins to treat his workers harshly, as well as abandoning the girl of his own station to whom he had been engaged.

A young wealthy gentleman looses everything in speculation and is forced into a humble life of a grocer. He finds his circumstances tragic at first and keeps his fate secret from all his friends and family. He re-considers his attitudes only when the woman with whom he is falling in love discovers he is a grocer, and throws him over.

The Mumfords are a middle-class couple, living in suburban Sutton on the outskirts of London with their young son. Reading the newspaper, they become aware of a young woman seeking a place as a "paying guest," or lodger. To supplement their income they decide to take a tenant, named Louise Derrick, who is in need of a place to live due to disagreements with her immediate family. Louise, who is poorly educated and bad-tempered, is being romantically...

Miriam Baske, a young widow, freed from the constraints of making a living, leaves behind the grey stone chapels and flinty hearts of Lancashire for the sun and artistic splendour of Italy. She meets a host of her countrymen vacationing and occupying themselves with travel, art, philosophy, romance, and improving their health.