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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“Whelpdale is anxious to make Marian’s acquaintance,” Jasper said to his sisters one day. “Shall we have him here tomorrow evening?”
“Just as you like,” Maud replied.
“You won’t object, Dora?”
“Oh no! I rather like Mr. Whelpdale.”
“If I were to repeat that to him he’d go wild with delight. But don’t be afraid; I shan’t. I’ll ask him to come for an hour, and trust to his discretion not to bore us by staying too long.”
A note was posted to Whelpdale; he was invited to present himself at eight o’clock, by which time Marian would have arrived. Jasper’s room was to be the scene of the assembly, and punctual to the minute the literary adviser appeared. He was dressed with all the finish his wardrobe allowed, and his face beamed with gratification; it was rapture to him to enter the presence of these three girls, one of whom he had, more suo, held in romantic remembrance since his one meeting with her at Jasper’s old lodgings. His eyes melted with tenderness as he approached Dora and saw her smile of gracious recognition. By Maud he was profoundly impressed. Marian inspired him with no awe, but he fully appreciated the charm of her features and her modest gravity. After all, it was to Dora that his eyes turned again most naturally. He thought her exquisite, and, rather than be long without a glimpse of her, he contented himself with fixing his eyes on the hem of her dress and the boot-toe that occasionally peeped from beneath it.
As was to be expected in such a circle, conversation soon turned to the subject of literary struggles.
“I always feel it rather humiliating,” said Jasper, “that I have gone through no very serious hardships. It must be so gratifying to say to young fellows who are just beginning: ‘Ah, I remember when I was within an ace of starving to death,’ and then come out with Grub Street reminiscences of the most appalling kind. Unfortunately, I have always had enough to eat.”
“I haven’t,” exclaimed Whelpdale. “I have lived for five days on a few cents’ worth of peanuts in the States.”
“What are peanuts, Mr. Whelpdale?” asked Dora.
Delighted with the question, Whelpdale described that undesirable species of food.
“It was in Troy,” he went on, “Troy, NY. To think that a man should live on peanuts in a town called Troy!”
“Tell us those adventures,” cried Jasper. “It’s a long time since I heard them, and the girls will enjoy it vastly.”
Dora looked at him with such good-humoured interest that the traveller needed no further persuasion.
“It came to pass in those days,” he began, “that I inherited from my godfather a small, a very small, sum of money. I was making strenuous efforts to write for magazines, with absolutely no encouragement. As everybody was talking just then of the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, I conceived the brilliant idea of crossing the Atlantic, in the hope that I might find valuable literary material at the Exhibition—or Exposition, as they called it—and elsewhere. I won’t trouble you with an account of how I lived whilst I still had money; sufficient that no one would accept the articles I sent to England, and that at last I got into perilous straits. I went to New York, and thought of returning home, but the spirit of adventure was strong in me. ‘I’ll go West,’ I said to myself. ‘There I am bound to find material.’ And go I did, taking an emigrant ticket to Chicago. It was December, and I should like you to imagine what a journey of a thousand miles by an emigrant train meant at that season. The cars were deadly cold, and what with that and the hardness of the seats I found it impossible to sleep; it reminded me of tortures I had read about; I thought my brain would have burst with the need of sleeping. At Cleveland, in Ohio, we had to wait several hours in the night; I left the station and wandered about till I found myself on the edge of a great cliff that looked over Lake Erie. A magnificent picture! Brilliant moonlight, and all the lake away to the horizon frozen and covered with snow. The clocks struck two as I stood there.”
He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant who brought coffee.
“Nothing could be more welcome,” cried Dora. “Mr. Whelpdale makes one feel quite chilly.”
There was laughter and chatting whilst Maud poured out the beverage. Then Whelpdale pursued his narrative.
“I reached Chicago with not quite five dollars in my pockets, and, with a courage which I now marvel at, I paid immediately four dollars and a half for a week’s board and lodging. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘for a week I am safe. If I earn nothing in that time, at least I shall owe nothing when I have to turn out into the streets.’ It was a rather dirty little boardinghouse, in Wabash Avenue, and occupied, as I soon found, almost entirely by actors. There was no fireplace in my bedroom, and if there had been I couldn’t have afforded a fire. But that mattered little; what I had to do was to set forth and discover some way of making money. Don’t suppose that I was in a desperate state of mind; how it was, I don’t quite know, but I felt decidedly cheerful. It was pleasant to be in this new region of the earth, and I went about the town like a tourist who has abundant resources.”
He sipped his coffee.
“I saw nothing for it but to apply at the office of some newspaper, and as I happened to light upon the biggest of them first of all, I put on a bold face, marched in, asked if I could see the
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