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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More than half an hour passed. It was not a pleasant train of thought that now occupied her. Her lips were drawn together, her brows were slightly wrinkled; the self-control which at other times was agreeably expressed upon her features had become rather too cold and decided. At one moment it seemed to her that she heard a sound in the bedroom—the doors were purposely left ajar—and her head turned quickly to listen, the look in her eyes instantaneously softening; but all remained quiet. The street would have been silent but for a cab that now and then passed—the swing of a hansom or the roll of a four-wheeler—and within the buildings nothing whatever was audible.
Yes, a footstep, briskly mounting the stone stairs. Not like that of the postman. A visitor, perhaps, to the other flat on the topmost landing. But the final pause was in this direction, and then came a sharp rat-tat at the door. Amy rose immediately and went to open.
Jasper Milvain raised his urban silk hat, then held out his hand with the greeting of frank friendship. His inquiries were in so loud a voice that Amy checked him with a forbidding gesture.
“You’ll wake Willie!”
“By Jove! I always forget,” he exclaimed in subdued tones. “Does the infant flourish?”
“Oh, yes!”
“Reardon out? I got back on Saturday evening, but couldn’t come round before this.” It was Monday. “How close it is in here! I suppose the roof gets so heated during the day. Glorious weather in the country! And I’ve no end of things to tell you. He won’t be long, I suppose?”
“I think not.”
He left his hat and stick in the passage, came into the study, and glanced about as if he expected to see some change since he was last here, three weeks ago.
“So you have been enjoying yourself?” said Amy as, after listening for a moment at the door, she took a seat.
“Oh, a little freshening of the faculties. But whose acquaintance do you think I have made?”
“Down there?”
“Yes. Your uncle Alfred and his daughter were staying at John Yule’s, and I saw something of them. I was invited to the house.”
“Did you speak of us?”
“To Miss Yule only. I happened to meet her on a walk, and in a blundering way I mentioned Reardon’s name. But of course it didn’t matter in the least. She inquired about you with a good deal of interest—asked if you were as beautiful as you promised to be years ago.”
Amy laughed.
“Doesn’t that proceed from your fertile invention, Mr. Milvain?”
“Not a bit of it! By the by, what would be your natural question concerning her? Do you think she gave promise of good looks?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say that she did. She had a good face, but—rather plain.”
“I see.” Jasper threw back his head and seemed to contemplate an object in memory. “Well, I shouldn’t wonder if most people called her a trifle plain even now; and yet—no, that’s hardly possible, after all. She has no colour. Wears her hair short.”
“Short?”
“Oh, I don’t mean the smooth, boyish hair with a parting—not the kind of hair that would be lank if it grew long. Curly all over. Looks uncommonly well, I assure you. She has a capital head. Odd girl; very odd girl! Quiet, thoughtful—not very happy, I’m afraid. Seems to think with dread of a return to books.”
“Indeed! But I had understood that she was a reader.”
“Reading enough for six people, probably. Perhaps her health is not very robust. Oh, I knew her by sight quite well—had seen her at the Reading-room. She’s the kind of girl that gets into one’s head, you know—suggestive; much more in her than comes out until one knows her very well.”
“Well, I should hope so,” remarked Amy, with a peculiar smile.
“But that’s by no means a matter of course. They didn’t invite me to come and see them in London.”
“I suppose Marian mentioned your acquaintance with this branch of the family?”
“I think not. At all events, she promised me she wouldn’t.”
Amy looked at him inquiringly, in a puzzled way.
“She promised you?”
“Voluntarily. We got rather sympathetic. Your uncle—Alfred, I mean—is a remarkable man; but I think he regarded me as a youth of no particular importance. Well, how do things go?”
Amy shook her head.
“No progress?”
“None whatever. He can’t work; I begin to be afraid that he is really ill. He must go away before the fine weather is over. Do persuade him tonight! I wish you could have had a holiday with him.”
“Out of the question now, I’m sorry to say. I must work savagely. But can’t you all manage a fortnight somewhere—Hastings, Eastbourne?”
“It would be simply rash. One goes on saying, ‘What does a pound or two matter?’—but it begins at length to matter a great deal.”
“I know, confound it all! Think how it would amuse some rich grocer’s son who pitches his half-sovereign to the waiter when he has dined himself into good humour! But I tell you what it is: you must really try to influence him towards practicality. Don’t you think—?”
He paused, and Amy sat looking at her hands.
“I have made an attempt,” she said at length, in a distant undertone.
“You really have?”
Jasper leaned forward, his clasped hands hanging between his knees. He was scrutinising her face, and Amy, conscious of
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