New Grub Street by George Gissing (best mobile ebook reader .txt) 📕
Description
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
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“Will you allow me five or six more puffs?” asked Mr. Quarmby, laying one hand on his ample stomach and elevating his pipe as if it were a glass of beaded liquor. “I shall then have done.”
“As many more as you like,” Marian replied.
The easiest chair was placed for her, Mr. Hinks hastening to perform this courtesy, and her father apprised her of the topic they were discussing.
“What’s your view, Marian? Is there anything to be said for the establishment of a literary academy in England?”
Mr. Quarmby beamed benevolently upon her, and Mr. Hinks, his scraggy neck at full length, awaited her reply with a look of the most respectful attention.
“I really think we have quite enough literary quarrelling as it is,” the girl replied, casting down her eyes and smiling.
Mr. Quarmby uttered a hollow chuckle, Mr. Hinks laughed thinly and exclaimed, “Very good indeed! Very good!” Yule affected to applaud with impartial smile.
“It wouldn’t harmonise with the Anglo-Saxon spirit,” remarked Mr. Hinks, with an air of diffident profundity.
Yule held forth on the subject for a few minutes in laboured phrases. Presently the conversation turned to periodicals, and the three men were unanimous in an opinion that no existing monthly or quarterly could be considered as representing the best literary opinion.
“We want,” remarked Mr. Quarmby, “we want a monthly review which shall deal exclusively with literature. The Fortnightly, the Contemporary—they are very well in their way, but then they are mere miscellanies. You will find one solid literary article amid a confused mass of politics and economics and general claptrap.”
“Articles on the currency and railway statistics and views of evolution,” said Mr. Hinks, with a look as if something were grating between his teeth.
“The quarterlies?” put in Yule. “Well, the original idea of the quarterlies was that there are not enough important books published to occupy solid reviewers more than four times a year. That may be true, but then a literary monthly would include much more than professed reviews. Hinks’s essays on the historical drama would have come out in it very well; or your ‘Spanish Poets,’ Quarmby.”
“I threw out the idea to Jedwood the other day,” said Mr. Quarmby, “and he seemed to nibble at it.”
“Yes, yes,” came from Yule; “but Jedwood has so many irons in the fire. I doubt if he has the necessary capital at command just now. No doubt he’s the man, if some capitalist would join him.”
“No enormous capital needed,” opined Mr. Quarmby. “The thing would pay its way almost from the first. It would take a place between the literary weeklies and the quarterlies. The former are too academic, the latter too massive, for multitudes of people who yet have strong literary tastes. Foreign publications should be liberally dealt with. But, as Hinks says, no meddling with the books that are no books—biblia abiblia; nothing about essays on bimetallism and treatises for or against vaccination.”
Even here, in the freedom of a friend’s study, he laughed his Reading-room laugh, folding both hands upon his expansive waistcoat.
“Fiction? I presume a serial of the better kind might be admitted?” said Yule.
“That would be advisable, no doubt. But strictly of the better kind.”
“Oh, strictly of the better kind,” chimed in Mr. Hinks.
They pursued the discussion as if they were an editorial committee planning a review of which the first number was shortly to appear. It occupied them until Mrs. Yule announced at the door that supper was ready.
During the meal Marian found herself the object of unusual attention; her father troubled to inquire if the cut of cold beef he sent her was to her taste, and kept an eye on her progress. Mr. Hinks talked to her in a tone of respectful sympathy, and Mr. Quarmby was paternally jovial when he addressed her. Mrs. Yule would have kept silence, in her ordinary way, but this evening her husband made several remarks which he had adapted to her intellect, and even showed that a reply would be graciously received.
Mother and daughter remained together when the men withdrew to their tobacco and toddy. Neither made allusion to the wonderful change, but they talked more light-heartedly than for a long time.
On the morrow Yule began by consulting Marian with regard to the disposition of matter in an essay he was writing. What she said he weighed carefully, and seemed to think that she had set his doubts at rest.
“Poor old Hinks!” he said presently, with a sigh. “Breaking up, isn’t he? He positively totters in his walk. I’m afraid he’s the kind of man to have a paralytic stroke; it wouldn’t astonish me to hear at any moment that he was lying helpless.”
“What ever would become of him in that case?”
“Goodness knows! One might ask the same of so many of us. What would become of me, for instance, if I were incapable of work?”
Marian could make no reply.
“There’s something I’ll just mention to you,” he went on in a lowered tone, “though I don’t wish you to take it too seriously. I’m beginning to have a little trouble with my eyes.”
She looked at him, startled.
“With your eyes?”
“Nothing, I hope; but—well, I think I shall see an oculist. One doesn’t care to face a prospect of failing sight, perhaps of cataract, or something of that kind; still, it’s better to know the facts, I should say.”
“By all means go to an oculist,” said Marian, earnestly.
“Don’t disturb yourself about it. It may be nothing at all. But in any case I must change my glasses.”
He rustled over some slips of manuscript, whilst Marian regarded him anxiously.
“Now, I appeal to you, Marian,” he continued: “could I possibly save money out of an income that has never exceeded two hundred and fifty pounds, and often—I mean even in latter years—has been much less?”
“I don’t see how you could.”
“In one way,
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