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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“Does Fadge retire from The Study, then?” inquired Reardon, when he had received this tirade with a friendly laugh.
“Yes, he does. Was going to, it seems, in any case. Of course I heard nothing about the two reviews, and I was almost afraid to smile whilst Fadge was talking with me, lest I should betray my thought. Did you know anything about the fellow before?”
“Not I. Didn’t know who edited The Study.”
“Nor I either. Remarkable what a number of illustrious obscure are going about. But I have still something else to tell you. I’m going to set my sisters afloat in literature.”
“How!”
“Well, I don’t see why they shouldn’t try their hands at a little writing, instead of giving lessons, which doesn’t suit them a bit. Last night, when I got back from Wimbledon, I went to look up Davies. Perhaps you don’t remember my mentioning him; a fellow who was at Jolly and Monk’s, the publishers, up to a year ago. He edits a trade journal now, and I see very little of him. However, I found him at home, and had a long practical talk with him. I wanted to find out the state of the market as to such wares as Jolly and Monk dispose of. He gave me some very useful hints, and the result was that I went off this morning and saw Monk himself—no Jolly exists at present. ‘Mr. Monk,’ I began, in my blandest tone—you know it—‘I am requested to call upon you by a lady who thinks of preparing a little volume to be called A Child’s History of the English Parliament. Her idea is, that’—and so on. Well, I got on admirably with Monk, especially when he learnt that I was to be connected with Culpepper’s new venture; he smiled upon the project, and said he should be very glad to see a specimen chapter; if that pleased him, we could then discuss terms.”
“But has one of your sisters really begun such a book?” inquired Amy.
“Neither of them knows anything of the matter, but they are certainly capable of doing the kind of thing I have in mind, which will consist largely of anecdotes of prominent statesmen. I myself shall write the specimen chapter, and send it to the girls to show them what I propose. I shouldn’t wonder if they make some fifty pounds out of it. The few books that will be necessary they can either get at a Wattleborough library, or I can send them.”
“Your energy is remarkable, all of a sudden,” said Reardon.
“Yes. The hour has come, I find. ‘There is a tide’—to quote something that has the charm of freshness.”
The supper—which consisted of bread and butter, cheese, sardines, cocoa—was now over, and Jasper, still enlarging on his recent experiences and future prospects, led the way back to the sitting-room. Not very long after this, Amy left the two friends to their pipes; she was anxious that her husband should discuss his affairs privately with Milvain, and give ear to the practical advice which she knew would be tendered him.
“I hear that you are still stuck fast,” began Jasper, when they had smoked awhile in silence.
“Yes.”
“Getting rather serious, I should fear, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” repeated Reardon, in a low voice.
“Come, come, old man, you can’t go on in this way. Would it, or wouldn’t it, be any use if you took a seaside holiday?”
“Not the least. I am incapable of holiday, if the opportunity were offered. Do something I must, or I shall fret myself into imbecility.”
“Very well. What is it to be?”
“I shall try to manufacture two volumes. They needn’t run to more than about two hundred and seventy pages, and those well spaced out.”
“This is refreshing. This is practical. But look now: let it be something rather sensational. Couldn’t we invent a good title—something to catch eye and ear? The title would suggest the story, you know.”
Reardon laughed contemptuously, but the scorn was directed rather against himself than Milvain.
“Let’s try,” he muttered.
Both appeared to exercise their minds on the problem for a few minutes. Then Jasper slapped his knee.
“How would this do: The Weird Sisters? Devilish good, eh? Suggests all sorts of things, both to the vulgar and the educated. Nothing brutally claptrap about it, you know.”
“But—what does it suggest to you?”
“Oh, witch-like, mysterious girls or women. Think it over.”
There was another long silence. Reardon’s face was that of a man in blank misery.
“I have been trying,” he said at length, after an attempt to speak which was checked by a huskiness in his throat, “to explain to myself how this state of things has come about. I almost think I can do so.”
“How?”
“That half-year abroad, and the extraordinary shock of happiness which followed at once upon it, have disturbed the balance of my nature. It was adjusted to circumstances of hardship, privation, struggle. A temperament like mine can’t pass through such a violent change of conditions without being greatly affected; I have never since been the man I was before I left England. The stage I had then reached was the result of a slow and elaborate building up; I could look back and see the processes by which I had grown from the boy who was a mere bookworm to the man who had all but succeeded as a novelist. It was a perfectly natural, sober development. But in the last two years and a half I can distinguish no order. In living through it, I have imagined from time to time that my powers were coming to their ripest; but that was mere delusion. Intellectually, I have fallen back. The probability is that this wouldn’t matter, if only I could live on in peace of mind; I
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