New Grub Street by George Gissing (best mobile ebook reader .txt) 📕
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Grub Street is the name of a former street in London synonymous with pulp writers and low-quality publishers. New Grub Street takes its name from that old street, as it follows the lives and endeavors of a group of writers active in the literary scene of 1880s London.
Edwin Reardon is a quiet and intelligent writer whose artistic sensibilities are the opposite of what the London public wants to read. He’s forced to write long, joyless novels that he thinks pop publishers will want to buy. These novels are draining to write, yet result in meager sales; soon Edwin’s increasingly small bank account, and his stubborn pride, start to put a strain on his once-happy marriage.
His best friend, Biffen, lies to one side of Edwin’s nature: as another highly-educated writer, he accepts a dingy, lonely, and hungry life of abject poverty in exchange for being able to produce a novel that’s true to his artistic desires but is unlikely to sell. On the other side lies Jasper Milvain, an “alarmingly modern” writer laser-focused on earning as much money as possible no matter what he’s made to write, as he floats through the same literary circles that Edwin haunts.
The intricately-told tale follows these writers as their differing outlooks and their fluctuating ranks in society affect them and the people around them. Gissing, himself a prolific writer intimately familiar with the London literary scene, draws from his own life in laying out the characters and events in the novel. He carefully elaborates the fragile social fabric of the literary world, its paupers and its barons both equal in the industry but unequal in public life. Though the novel is about writers on the face, the deep thread that runs through it all is the brutality of the modern social structure, where the greedy and superficial are rewarded with stability and riches, while the delicate and thoughtful are condemned to live on the margins of respectable society in grimy poverty, robbed not only of dignity, but of love.
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- Author: George Gissing
Read book online «New Grub Street by George Gissing (best mobile ebook reader .txt) 📕». Author - George Gissing
By George Gissing.
Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint I: A Man of His Day II: The House of Yule III: Holiday IV: An Author and His Wife V: The Way Hither VI: The Practical Friend VII: Marian’s Home VIII: To the Winning Side IX: Invita Minerva X: The Friends of the Family XI: Respite XII: Work Without Hope XIII: A Warning XIV: Recruits XV: The Last Resource XVI: Rejection XVII: The Parting XVIII: The Old Home XIX: The Past Revived XX: The End of Waiting XXI: Mr. Yule Leaves Town XXII: The Legatees XXIII: A Proposed Investment XXIV: Jasper’s Magnanimity XXV: A Fruitless Meeting XXVI: Married Woman’s Property XXVII: The Lonely Man XXVIII: Interim XXIX: Catastrophe XXX: Waiting on Destiny XXXI: A Rescue and a Summons XXXII: Reardon Becomes Practical XXXIII: The Sunny Way XXXIV: A Check XXXV: Fever and Rest XXXVI: Jasper’s Delicate Case XXXVII: Rewards Colophon Uncopyright ImprintThis ebook is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteers for Standard Ebooks, and builds on the hard work of other literature lovers made possible by the public domain.
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I A Man of His DayAs the Milvains sat down to breakfast the clock of Wattleborough parish church struck eight; it was two miles away, but the strokes were borne very distinctly on the west wind this autumn morning. Jasper, listening before he cracked an egg, remarked with cheerfulness:
“There’s a man being hanged in London at this moment.”
“Surely it isn’t necessary to let us know that,” said his sister Maud, coldly.
“And in such a tone, too!” protested his sister Dora.
“Who is it?” inquired Mrs. Milvain, looking at her son with pained forehead.
“I don’t know. It happened to catch my eye in the paper yesterday that someone was to be hanged at Newgate this morning. There’s a certain satisfaction in reflecting that it is not oneself.”
“That’s your selfish way of looking at things,” said Maud.
“Well,” returned Jasper, “seeing that the fact came into my head, what better use could I make of it? I could curse the brutality of an age that sanctioned such things; or I could grow doleful over the misery of the poor fellow. But those emotions would be as little profitable to others as to myself. It just happened that I saw the thing in a light of consolation. Things are bad with me, but not so bad as that. I might be going out between Jack Ketch and the Chaplain to be hanged; instead of that, I am eating a really fresh egg, and very excellent buttered toast, with coffee as good as can be reasonably expected in this part of the world.—(Do try boiling the milk, mother.)—The tone in which I spoke was spontaneous; being so, it needs no justification.”
He was a young man of five-and-twenty, well built, though a trifle meagre, and of pale complexion. He had hair that was very nearly black, and a clean-shaven face, best described, perhaps, as of bureaucratic type. The clothes he wore were of expensive material, but had seen a good deal of service. His stand-up collar curled over at the corners, and his necktie was lilac-sprigged.
Of the two sisters, Dora, aged twenty, was the more like him in visage, but she spoke with a gentleness which seemed to indicate a different character. Maud, who was twenty-two, had bold, handsome features, and very beautiful hair of russet tinge; hers was not a face that readily smiled. Their mother had the look and manners of an invalid, though she sat at table in the ordinary way. All were dressed as ladies, though very simply. The room, which looked upon a small patch of garden, was furnished with old-fashioned comfort, only one or two objects suggesting the decorative spirit of 1882.
“A man who comes to be hanged,” pursued Jasper, impartially, “has the satisfaction of knowing that he has brought society to its last resource. He is a man of such fatal importance that nothing will serve against him but the supreme effort of law. In a way, you know, that is success.”
“In a way,” repeated Maud, scornfully.
“Suppose we talk of something else,” suggested Dora, who seemed to fear a conflict between her sister and Jasper.
Almost at the same moment a diversion was afforded by the arrival of the post. There was a letter for Mrs. Milvain, a letter and newspaper for her son. Whilst the girls and their mother talked of unimportant news communicated by the one correspondent, Jasper read the missive addressed to himself.
“This is from Reardon,” he remarked to the younger girl. “Things are going badly with him. He is just the kind of fellow to end by poisoning or shooting himself.”
“But why?”
“Can’t get anything done; and begins to be sore troubled on his wife’s account.”
“Is he ill?”
“Overworked, I suppose. But it’s just what I foresaw. He isn’t the kind of man to keep up literary production as a paying business. In favourable circumstances he might write a fairly good book once every two
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