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.
Read free book «New Grub Street by George Gissing (best mobile ebook reader .txt) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: George Gissing
Read book online «New Grub Street by George Gissing (best mobile ebook reader .txt) 📕». Author - George Gissing
“The enjoyment with which he anticipates it!” murmured Maud, looking at her mother.
“Not at all,” said Jasper. “It’s true I envied the fellow, because he persuaded a handsome girl to believe in him and share his risks, but I shall be very sorry if he goes to the—to the dogs. He’s my one serious friend. But it irritates me to see a man making such large demands upon fortune. One must be more modest—as I am. Because one book had a sort of success he imagined his struggles were over. He got a hundred pounds for On Neutral Ground, and at once counted on a continuance of payments in geometrical proportion. I hinted to him that he couldn’t keep it up, and he smiled with tolerance, no doubt thinking ‘He judges me by himself.’ But I didn’t do anything of the kind.—(Toast, please, Dora.)—I’m a stronger man than Reardon; I can keep my eyes open, and wait.”
“Is his wife the kind of person to grumble?” asked Mrs. Milvain.
“Well, yes, I suspect that she is. The girl wasn’t content to go into modest rooms—they must furnish a flat. I rather wonder he didn’t start a carriage for her. Well, his next book brought only another hundred, and now, even if he finishes this one, it’s very doubtful if he’ll get as much. The Optimist was practically a failure.”
“Mr. Yule may leave them some money,” said Dora.
“Yes. But he may live another ten years, and he would see them both in Marylebone Workhouse before he advanced sixpence, or I’m much mistaken in him. Her mother has only just enough to live upon; can’t possibly help them. Her brother wouldn’t give or lend twopence halfpenny.”
“Has Mr. Reardon no relatives!”
“I never heard him make mention of a single one. No, he has done the fatal thing. A man in his position, if he marry at all, must take either a work-girl or an heiress, and in many ways the work-girl is preferable.”
“How can you say that?” asked Dora. “You never cease talking about the advantages of money.”
“Oh, I don’t mean that for me the work-girl would be preferable; by no means; but for a man like Reardon. He is absurd enough to be conscientious, likes to be called an ‘artist,’ and so on. He might possibly earn a hundred and fifty a year if his mind were at rest, and that would be enough if he had married a decent little dressmaker. He wouldn’t desire superfluities, and the quality of his work would be its own reward. As it is, he’s ruined.”
“And I repeat,” said Maud, “that you enjoy the prospect.”
“Nothing of the kind. If I seem to speak exultantly it’s only because my intellect enjoys the clear perception of a fact.—A little marmalade, Dora; the homemade, please.”
“But this is very sad, Jasper,” said Mrs. Milvain, in her half-absent way. “I suppose they can’t even go for a holiday?”
“Quite out of the question.”
“Not even if you invited them to come here for a week?”
“Now, mother,” urged Maud, “that’s impossible, you know very well.”
“I thought we might make an effort, dear. A holiday might mean everything to him.”
“No, no,” fell from Jasper, thoughtfully. “I don’t think you’d get along very well with Mrs. Reardon; and then, if her uncle is coming to Mr. Yule’s, you know, that would be awkward.”
“I suppose it would; though those people would only stay a day or two, Miss Harrow said.”
“Why can’t Mr. Yule make them friends, those two lots of people?” asked Dora. “You say he’s on good terms with both.”
“I suppose he thinks it’s no business of his.”
Jasper mused over the letter from his friend.
“Ten years hence,” he said, “if Reardon is still alive, I shall be lending him five-pound notes.”
A smile of irony rose to Maud’s lips. Dora laughed.
“To be sure! To be sure!” exclaimed their brother. “You have no faith. But just understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won’t make concessions, or rather, he can’t make them; he can’t supply the market. I—well, you may say that at present I do nothing; but that’s a great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income. Whatever he has to sell he’ll get payment for it from all sorts of various quarters; none of your unpractical selling for a lump sum to a middleman who will make six distinct profits. Now, look you: if I had been in Reardon’s place, I’d have made four hundred at least out of The Optimist; I should have gone shrewdly to work with magazines and newspapers and foreign publishers, and—all sorts of people. Reardon can’t do that kind of thing, he’s behind his age; he sells a manuscript as if he lived in Sam Johnson’s Grub Street. But our Grub Street of today is quite a different place: it is supplied with telegraphic communication, it knows what literary fare is in demand in every part of the world, its inhabitants are men of business, however seedy.”
“It sounds ignoble,” said Maud.
“I have nothing to do with that, my dear girl. Now, as I tell you, I am slowly, but surely, learning the business. My line won’t be novels; I have failed in that direction, I’m not cut out for the work. It’s a pity, of course; there’s a great deal of money in it. But I have plenty of scope. In ten years, I repeat, I
Comments (0)