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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“It seems very clear to me,” she said, “that a long book is out of the question for him at present. He writes so slowly, and is so fastidious. It would be a fatal thing to hurry through something weaker even than the last.”
“You think The Optimist weak?” Jasper asked, half absently.
“I don’t think it worthy of Edwin; I don’t see how anyone can.”
“I have wondered what your opinion was. Yes, he ought to try a new tack, I think.”
Just then there came the sound of a latchkey opening the outer door. Jasper lay back in his chair and waited with a smile for his expected friend’s appearance; Amy made no movement.
“Oh, there you are!” said Reardon, presenting himself with the dazzled eyes of one who has been in darkness; he spoke in a voice of genial welcome, though it still had the note of depression. “When did you get back?”
Milvain began to recount what he had told in the first part of his conversation with Amy. As he did so, the latter withdrew, and was absent for five minutes; on reappearing she said:
“You’ll have some supper with us, Mr. Milvain?”
“I think I will, please.”
Shortly after, all repaired to the eating-room, where conversation had to be carried on in a low tone because of the proximity of the bedchamber in which lay the sleeping child. Jasper began to tell of certain things that had happened to him since his arrival in town.
“It was a curious coincidence—but, by the by, have you heard of what The Study has been doing?”
“I should rather think so,” replied Reardon, his face lighting up. “With no small satisfaction.”
“Delicious, isn’t it?” exclaimed his wife. “I thought it too good to be true when Edwin heard of it from Mr. Biffen.”
All three laughed in subdued chorus. For the moment, Reardon became a new man in his exultation over the contradictory reviewers.
“Oh, Biffen told you, did he? Well,” continued Jasper, “it was an odd thing, but when I reached my lodgings on Saturday evening there lay a note from Horace Barlow, inviting me to go and see him on Sunday afternoon out at Wimbledon, the special reason being that the editor of The Study would be there, and Barlow thought I might like to meet him. Now this letter gave me a fit of laughter; not only because of those precious reviews, but because Alfred Yule had been telling me all about this same editor, who rejoices in the name of Fadge. Your uncle, Mrs. Reardon, declares that Fadge is the most malicious man in the literary profession; though that’s saying such a very great deal—well, never mind! Of course I was delighted to go and meet Fadge. At Barlow’s I found the queerest collection of people, most of them women of the inkiest description. The great Fadge himself surprised me; I expected to see a gaunt, bilious man, and he was the rosiest and dumpiest little dandy you can imagine; a fellow of forty-five, I dare say, with thin yellow hair and blue eyes and a manner of extreme innocence. Fadge flattered me with confidential chat, and I discovered at length why Barlow had asked me to meet him; it’s Fadge that is going to edit Culpepper’s new monthly—you’ve heard about it?—and he had actually thought it worth while to enlist me among contributors! Now, how’s that for a piece of news?”
The speaker looked from Reardon to Amy with a smile of vast significance.
“I rejoice to hear it!” said Reardon, fervently.
“You see! you see!” cried Jasper, forgetting all about the infant in the next room, “all things come to the man who knows how to wait. But I’m hanged if I expected a thing of this kind to come so soon! Why, I’m a man of distinction! My doings have been noted; the admirable qualities of my style have drawn attention; I’m looked upon as one of the coming men! Thanks, I confess, in some measure, to old Barlow; he seems to have amused himself with cracking me up to all and sundry. That last thing of mine in The West End has done me a vast amount of good, it seems. And Alfred Yule himself had noticed that paper in The Wayside. That’s how things work, you know; reputation comes with a burst, just when you’re not looking for anything of the kind.”
“What’s the new magazine to be called?” asked Amy.
“Why, they propose The Current. Not bad, in a way; though you imagine a fellow saying ‘Have you seen the current Current?’ At all events, the tone is to be up to date, and the articles are to be short; no padding, merum sal from cover to cover. What do you think I have undertaken to do, for a start? A paper consisting of sketches of typical readers of each of the principal daily and weekly papers. A deuced good idea, you know—my own, of course—but deucedly hard to carry out. I shall rise to the occasion, see if I don’t. I’ll rival Fadge himself in maliciousness—though I must confess I discovered no particular malice in the fellow’s way of talking. The article shall make a sensation. I’ll spend a whole month on it, and make it a perfect piece of satire.”
“Now that’s the kind of thing that inspires me with awe and envy,” said Reardon. “I could no more write such a paper than an article on Fluxions.”
“ ’Tis my vocation, Hal! You might think I hadn’t experience enough, to begin with. But my intuition is so strong that I can make a little experience go an immense way. Most people would imagine I had been wasting my time these last few years, just sauntering about, reading nothing but periodicals, making acquaintance with loafers of every description. The truth is, I have been collecting ideas, and ideas that are convertible into coin of the realm, my boy; I have the special
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