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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“Hungry, too,” she said, seeing the crust Marian was nibbling. “You really must have more lunch, dear. It isn’t right to go so long; you’ll make yourself ill.”
“Have you been out?” Marian asked.
“Yes; I went to Holloway.”
Mrs. Yule sighed and looked very unhappy. By “going to Holloway” was always meant a visit to her own relatives—a married sister with three children, and a brother who inhabited the same house. To her husband she scarcely ever ventured to speak of these persons; Yule had no intercourse with them. But Marian was always willing to listen sympathetically, and her mother often exhibited a touching gratitude for this condescension—as she deemed it.
“Are things no better?” the girl inquired.
“Worse, as far as I can see. John has begun his drinking again, and him and Tom quarrel every night; there’s no peace in the ’ouse.”
If ever Mrs. Yule lapsed into gross errors of pronunciation or phrase, it was when she spoke of her kinsfolk. The subject seemed to throw her back into a former condition.
“He ought to go and live by himself,” said Marian, referring to her mother’s brother, the thirsty John.
“So he ought, to be sure. I’m always telling them so. But there! you don’t seem to be able to persuade them, they’re that silly and obstinate. And Susan, she only gets angry with me, and tells me not to talk in a stuck-up way. I’m sure I never say a word that could offend her; I’m too careful for that. And there’s Annie; no doing anything with her! She’s about the streets at all hours, and what’ll be the end of it no one can say. They’re getting that ragged, all of them. It isn’t Susan’s fault; indeed it isn’t. She does all that woman can. But Tom hasn’t brought home ten shillings the last month, and it seems to me as if he was getting careless. I gave her half-a-crown; it was all I could do. And the worst of it is, they think I could do so much more if I liked. They’re always hinting that we are rich people, and it’s no good my trying to persuade them. They think I’m telling falsehoods, and it’s very hard to be looked at in that way; it is, indeed, Marian.”
“You can’t help it, mother. I suppose their suffering makes them unkind and unjust.”
“That’s just what it does, my dear; you never said anything truer. Poverty will make the best people bad, if it gets hard enough. Why there’s so much of it in the world, I’m sure I can’t see.”
“I suppose father will be back soon?”
“He said dinnertime.”
“Mr. Quarmby has been telling me something which is wonderfully good news if it’s really true; but I can’t help feeling doubtful. He says that father may perhaps be made editor of The Study at the end of this year.”
Mrs. Yule, of course, understood, in outline, these affairs of the literary world; she thought of them only from the pecuniary point of view, but that made no essential distinction between her and the mass of literary people.
“My word!” she exclaimed. “What a thing that would be for us!”
Marian had begun to explain her reluctance to base any hopes on Mr. Quarmby’s prediction, when the sound of a postman’s knock at the house-door caused her mother to disappear for a moment.
“It’s for you,” said Mrs. Yule, returning. “From the country.”
Marian took the letter and examined its address with interest.
“It must be one of the Miss Milvains. Yes; Dora Milvain.”
After Jasper’s departure from Finden his sisters had seen Marian several times, and the mutual liking between her and them had been confirmed by opportunity of conversation. The promise of correspondence had hitherto waited for fulfilment. It seemed natural to Marian that the younger of the two girls should write; Maud was attractive and agreeable, and probably clever, but Dora had more spontaneity in friendship.
“It will amuse you to hear,” wrote Dora, “that the literary project our brother mentioned in a letter whilst you were still here is really to come to something. He has sent us a specimen chapter, written by himself of the ‘Child’s History of Parliament,’ and Maud thinks she could carry it on in that style, if there’s no hurry. She and I have both set to work on English histories, and we shall be authorities before long. Jolly and Monk offer thirty pounds for the little book, if it suits them when finished, with certain possible profits in the future. Trust Jasper for making a bargain! So perhaps our literary career will be something more than a joke, after all. I hope it may; anything rather than a life of teaching. We shall be so glad to hear from you, if you still care to trouble about country girls.”
And so on. Marian read with a pleased smile, then acquainted her mother with the contents.
“I am very glad,” said Mrs. Yule; “it’s so seldom you get a letter.”
“Yes.”
Marian seemed desirous of saying something more, and her mother
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