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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“But what an ignoble death it would have been!” he pursued. “Perishing in the garret of a lodging-house which caught fire by the overturning of a drunkard’s lamp! One would like to end otherwise.”
“Where would you wish to die?” asked Reardon, musingly.
“At home,” replied the other, with pathetic emphasis. “I have never had a home since I was a boy, and am never likely to have one. But to die at home is an unreasoning hope I still cherish.”
“If you had never come to London, what would you have now been?”
“Almost certainly a schoolmaster in some small town. And one might be worse off than that, you know.”
“Yes, one might live peaceably enough in such a position. And I—I should be in an estate-agent’s office, earning a sufficient salary, and most likely married to some unambitious country girl. I should have lived an intelligible life, instead of only trying to live, aiming at modes of life beyond my reach. My mistake was that of numberless men nowadays. Because I was conscious of brains, I thought that the only place for me was London. It’s easy enough to understand this common delusion. We form our ideas of London from old literature; we think of London as if it were still the one centre of intellectual life; we think and talk like Chatterton. But the truth is that intellectual men in our day do their best to keep away from London—when once they know the place. There are libraries everywhere; papers and magazines reach the north of Scotland as soon as they reach Brompton; it’s only on rare occasions, for special kinds of work, that one is bound to live in London. And as for recreation, why, now that no English theatre exists, what is there in London that you can’t enjoy in almost any part of England? At all events, a yearly visit of a week would be quite sufficient for all the special features of the town. London is only a huge shop, with an hotel on the upper storeys. To be sure, if you make it your artistic subject, that’s a different thing. But neither you nor I would do that by deliberate choice.”
“I think not.”
“It’s a huge misfortune, this will-o’-the-wisp attraction exercised by London on young men of brains. They come here to be degraded, or to perish, when their true sphere is a life of peaceful remoteness. The type of man capable of success in London is more or less callous and cynical. If I had the training of boys, I would teach them to think of London as the last place where life can be lived worthily.”
“And the place where you are most likely to die in squalid wretchedness.”
“The one happy result of my experiences,” said Reardon, “is that they have cured me of ambition. What a miserable fellow I should be if I were still possessed with the desire to make a name! I can’t even recall very clearly that state of mind. My strongest desire now is for peaceful obscurity. I am tired out; I want to rest for the remainder of my life.”
“You won’t have much rest at Croydon.”
“Oh, it isn’t impossible. My time will be wholly occupied in a round of all but mechanical duties, and I think that will be the best medicine for my mind. I shall read very little, and that only in the classics. I don’t say that I shall always be content in such a position; in a few years perhaps something pleasanter will offer. But in the meantime it will do very well. Then there is our expedition to Greece to look forward to. I am quite in earnest about that. The year after next, if we are both alive, assuredly we go.”
“The year after next.” Biffen smiled dubiously.
“I have demonstrated to you mathematically that it is possible.”
“You have; but so are a great many other things that one does not dare to hope for.”
Someone knocked at the door, opened it, and said:
“Here’s a telegram for you, Mr. Reardon.”
The friends looked at each other, as if some fear had entered the minds of both. Reardon opened the despatch. It was from his wife, and ran thus:
“Willie is ill of diphtheria. Please come to us at once. I am staying with Mrs. Carter, at her mother’s, at Brighton.”
The full address was given.
“You hadn’t heard of her going there?” said Biffen, when he had read the lines.
“No. I haven’t seen Carter for several days, or perhaps he would have told me. Brighton, at this time of year? But I believe there’s a fashionable ‘season’ about now, isn’t there? I suppose that would account for it.”
He spoke in a slighting tone, but showed increasing agitation.
“Of course you will go?”
“I must. Though I’m in no condition for making a journey.”
His friend examined him anxiously.
“Are you feverish at all this evening?”
Reardon held out a hand that the other might feel his pulse. The beat was rapid to begin with, and had been heightened since the arrival of the telegram.
“But go I must. The poor little fellow has no great place in my heart, but, when Amy sends
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