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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“If ever she says anything, I’ll let you know.”
“But it seems to me that you have a right to question her.”
“I can’t do that, Alfred.”
“Unfortunately, there are a good many things you can’t do.” With that remark, familiar to his wife in substance, though the tone of it was less caustic than usual, he rose and sauntered from the room. He spent a gloomy hour in the study, then went off to join the literary circle at Mr. Quarmby’s.
XXIV Jasper’s MagnanimityOccasionally Milvain met his sisters as they came out of church on Sunday morning, and walked home to have dinner with them. He did so today, though the sky was cheerless and a strong northwest wind made it anything but agreeable to wait about in open spaces.
“Are you going to Mrs. Wright’s this afternoon?” he asked, as they went on together.
“I thought of going,” replied Maud. “Marian will be with Dora.”
“You ought both to go. You mustn’t neglect that woman.”
He said nothing more just then, but when presently he was alone with Dora in the sitting-room for a few minutes, he turned with a peculiar smile and remarked quietly:
“I think you had better go with Maud this afternoon.”
“But I can’t. I expect Marian at three.”
“That’s just why I want you to go.”
She looked her surprise.
“I want to have a talk with Marian. We’ll manage it in this way. At a quarter to three you two shall start, and as you go out you can tell the landlady that if Miss Yule comes she is to wait for you, as you won’t be long. She’ll come upstairs, and I shall be there. You see?”
Dora turned half away, disturbed a little, but not displeased.
“And what about Miss Rupert?” she asked.
“Oh, Miss Rupert may go to Jericho for all I care. I’m in a magnanimous mood.”
“Very, I’ve no doubt.”
“Well, you’ll do this? One of the results of poverty, you see; one can’t even have a private conversation with a friend without plotting to get the use of a room. But there shall be an end of this state of things.”
He nodded significantly. Thereupon Dora left the room to speak with her sister.
The device was put into execution, and Jasper saw his sisters depart knowing that they were not likely to return for some three hours. He seated himself comfortably by the fire and mused. Five minutes had hardly gone by when he looked at his watch, thinking Marian must be unpunctual. He was nervous, though he had believed himself secure against such weakness. His presence here with the purpose he had in his mind seemed to him distinctly a concession to impulses he ought to have controlled; but to this resolve he had come, and it was now too late to recommence the arguments with himself. Too late? Well, not strictly so; he had committed himself to nothing; up to the last moment of freedom he could always—
That was doubtless Marian’s knock at the front door. He jumped up, walked the length of the room, sat down on another chair, returned to his former seat. Then the door opened and Marian came in.
She was not surprised; the landlady had mentioned to her that Mr. Milvain was upstairs, waiting the return of his sisters.
“I am to make Dora’s excuses,” Jasper said. “She begged you would forgive her—that you would wait.”
“Oh yes.”
“And you were to be sure to take off your hat,” he added in a laughing tone; “and to let me put your umbrella in the corner—like that.”
He had always admired the shape of Marian’s head, and the beauty of her short, soft, curly hair. As he watched her uncovering it, he was pleased with the grace of her arms and the pliancy of her slight figure.
“Which is usually your chair?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“When one goes to see a friend frequently, one gets into regular habits in these matters. In Biffen’s garret I used to have the most uncomfortable chair it was ever my lot to sit upon; still, I came to feel an affection for it. At Reardon’s I always had what was supposed to be the most luxurious seat, but it was too small for me, and I eyed it resentfully on sitting down and rising.”
“Have you any news about the Reardons?”
“Yes. I am told that Reardon has had the offer of a secretaryship to a boys’ home, or something of the kind, at Croydon. But I suppose there’ll be no need for him to think of that now.”
“Surely not!”
“Oh there’s no saying.”
“Why should he do work of that kind now?”
“Perhaps his wife will tell him that she wants her money all for herself.”
Marian laughed. It was very rarely that Jasper had heard her laugh at all, and never so spontaneously as this. He liked the music.
“You haven’t a very good opinion of Mrs. Reardon,” she said.
“She is a difficult person to judge. I never disliked her, by any means; but she was decidedly out of place as the wife of a struggling author. Perhaps I have been a little prejudiced against her since Reardon quarrelled with me on her account.”
Marian was astonished at this unlooked-for explanation of the rupture between Milvain and his friend. That they had not seen each other for some months she knew from Jasper himself but no definite cause had been assigned.
“I may as well let you know all about it,” Milvain continued, seeing that he had disconcerted the girl, as he meant to. “I met Reardon not long after they had parted, and he charged me with being in great part the cause of his troubles.”
The listener did not raise her eyes.
“You would never imagine what my fault was. Reardon declared that the tone of my conversation had been morally injurious to his wife. He said
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