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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“You were not eminently successful in that pursuit, I think?” said Jasper.
“I don’t think I got half-a-dozen orders. Yet that good Samaritan supported me for five or six weeks, whilst we travelled from Troy to Boston. It couldn’t go on; I was ashamed of myself; at last I told him that we must part. Upon my word, I believe he would have paid my expenses for another month; why, I can’t understand. But he had a vast respect for me because I had written in newspapers, and I do seriously think that he didn’t like to tell me I was a useless fellow. We parted on the very best of terms in Boston.”
“And you again had recourse to peanuts?” asked Dora.
“Well, no. In the meantime I had written to someone in England, begging the loan of just enough money to enable me to get home. The money came a day after I had seen Sterling off by train.”
An hour and a half quickly passed, and Jasper, who wished to have a few minutes of Marian’s company before it was time for her to go, cast a significant glance at his sisters. Dora said innocently:
“You wished me to tell you when it was half-past nine, Marian.”
And Marian rose. This was a signal Whelpdale could not disregard. Immediately he made ready for his own departure, and in less than five minutes was gone, his face at the last moment expressing blended delight and pain.
“Too good of you to have asked me to come,” he said with gratitude to Jasper, who went to the door with him. “You are a happy man, by Jove! A happy man!”
When Jasper returned to the room his sisters had vanished. Marian stood by the fire. He drew near to her, took her hands, and repeated laughingly Whelpdale’s last words.
“Is it true?” she asked.
“Tolerably true, I think.”
“Then I am as happy as you are.”
He released her hands, and moved a little apart.
“Marian, I have been thinking about that letter to your father. I had better get it written, don’t you think?”
She gazed at him with troubled eyes.
“Perhaps you had. Though we said it might be delayed until—”
“Yes, I know. But I suspect you had rather I didn’t wait any longer. Isn’t that the truth?”
“Partly. Do just as you wish, Jasper.”
“I’ll go and see him, if you like.”
“I am so afraid—No, writing will be better.”
“Very well. Then he shall have the letter tomorrow afternoon.”
“Don’t let it come before the last post. I had so much rather not. Manage it, if you can.”
“Very well. Now go and say good night to the girls. It’s a vile night, and you must get home as soon as possible.”
She turned away, but again came towards him, murmuring:
“Just a word or two more.”
“About the letter?”
“No. You haven’t said—”
He laughed.
“And you couldn’t go away contentedly unless I repeated for the hundredth time that I love you?”
Marian searched his countenance.
“Do you think it foolish? I live only on those words.”
“Well, they are better than peanuts.”
“Oh don’t! I can’t bear to—”
Jasper was unable to understand that such a jest sounded to her like profanity. She hid her face against him, and whispered the words that would have enraptured her had they but come from his lips. The young man found it pleasant enough to be worshipped, but he could not reply as she desired. A few phrases of tenderness, and his love-vocabulary was exhausted; he even grew weary when something more—the indefinite something—was vaguely required of him.
“You are a dear, good, tenderhearted girl,” he said, stroking her short, soft hair, which was exquisite to the hand. “Now go and get ready.”
She left him, but stood for a few moments on the landing before going to the girls’ room.
XXIX CatastropheMarian had finished the rough draft of a paper on James Harrington, author of Oceana. Her father went through it by the midnight lamp, and the next morning made his comments. A black sky and sooty rain strengthened his inclination to sit by the study fire and talk at large in a tone of flattering benignity.
“Those paragraphs on the Rota Club strike me as singularly happy,” he said, tapping the manuscript with the mouthpiece of his pipe. “Perhaps you might say a word or two more about Cyriac Skinner; one mustn’t be too allusive with general readers, their ignorance is incredible. But there is so little to add to this paper—so little to alter—that I couldn’t feel justified in sending it as my own work. I think it is altogether too good to appear anonymously. You must sign it, Marian, and have the credit that is due to you.”
“Oh, do you think it’s worth while?” answered the girl, who was far from easy under this praise. Of late there had been too much of it; it made her regard her father with suspicions which increased her sense of trouble in keeping a momentous secret from him.
“Yes, yes; you had better sign it. I’ll undertake there’s no other girl of your age who could turn out such a piece of work. I think we may fairly say that your apprenticeship is at an end. Before long,” he smiled anxiously, “I may be counting upon you as a valued contributor. And that reminds me; would you be disposed to call with me on the Jedwoods at their house next Sunday?”
Marian understood the intention that lay beneath this proposal. She saw that her father would not allow himself to seem discouraged by the silence she maintained on the great subject which awaited her decision. He was endeavouring gradually to involve her in his ambitions, to carry her forward by insensible steps. It pained
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