New Grub Street by George Gissing (best mobile ebook reader .txt) 📕
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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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“I can’t help thinking at times of the poor girl, Amy. Life will be easier for her now, with only her mother to support. Someone spoke of her this evening, and repeated Fadge’s lie that she used to do all her father’s writing.”
“She was capable of doing it. I must seem to you rather a poor-brained woman in comparison. Isn’t it true?”
“My dearest, you are a perfect woman, and poor Marian was only a clever schoolgirl. Do you know, I never could help imagining that she had ink-stains on her fingers. Heaven forbid that I should say it unkindly! It was touching to me at the time, for I knew how fearfully hard she worked.”
“She nearly ruined your life; remember that.”
Jasper was silent.
“You will never confess it, and that is a fault in you.”
“She loved me, Amy.”
“Perhaps! as a schoolgirl loves. But you never loved her.”
“No.”
Amy examined his face as he spoke.
“Her image is very faint before me,” Jasper pursued, “and soon I shall scarcely be able to recall it. Yes, you are right; she nearly ruined me. And in more senses than one. Poverty and struggle, under such circumstances, would have made me a detestable creature. As it is, I am not such a bad fellow, Amy.”
She laughed, and caressed his cheek.
“No, I am far from a bad fellow. I feel kindly to everyone who deserves it. I like to be generous, in word and deed. Trust me, there’s many a man who would like to be generous, but is made despicably mean by necessity. What a true sentence that is of Landor’s: ‘It has been repeated often enough that vice leads to misery; will no man declare that misery leads to vice?’ I have much of the weakness that might become viciousness, but I am now far from the possibility of being vicious. Of course there are men, like Fadge, who seem only to grow meaner the more prosperous they are; but these are exceptions. Happiness is the nurse of virtue.”
“And independence the root of happiness.”
“True. ‘The glorious privilege of being independent’—yes, Burns understood the matter. Go to the piano, dear, and play me something. If I don’t mind, I shall fall into Whelpdale’s vein, and talk about my ‘blessedness.’ Ha! isn’t the world a glorious place?”
“For rich people.”
“Yes, for rich people. How I pity the poor devils!—Play anything. Better still if you will sing, my nightingale!”
So Amy first played and then sang, and Jasper lay back in dreamy bliss.
ColophonNew Grub Street
was published in 1891 by
George Gissing.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Alex Cabal,
and is based on a transcription produced in 1999 by
John Handford and David Widger
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.
The cover page is adapted from
Bessborough Street, Pimlico,
a painting completed in 1900 by
Ambrose McEvoy.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 28, 2021, 5:57 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/george-gissing/new-grub-street.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
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