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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“Is their brother likely to call here?” Mrs. Yule asked, with misgiving.
“No one has invited him to,” was the girl’s quiet reply.
“He wouldn’t come without that?”
“It’s not likely that he even knows the address.”
“Your father won’t be seeing him, I suppose?”
“By chance, perhaps. I don’t know.”
It was very rare indeed for these two to touch upon any subject save those of everyday interest. In spite of the affection between them, their exchange of confidence did not go very far; Mrs. Yule, who had never exercised maternal authority since Marian’s earliest childhood, claimed no maternal privileges, and Marian’s natural reserve had been strengthened by her mother’s respectful aloofness. The English fault of domestic reticence could scarcely go further than it did in their case; its exaggeration is, of course, one of the characteristics of those unhappy families severed by differences of education between the old and young.
“I think,” said Marian, in a forced tone, “that father hasn’t much liking for Mr. Milvain.”
She wished to know if her mother had heard any private remarks on this subject, but she could not bring herself to ask directly.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Mrs. Yule, smoothing her dress. “He hasn’t said anything to me, Marian.”
An awkward silence. The mother had fixed her eyes on the mantelpiece, and was thinking hard.
“Otherwise,” said Marian, “he would have said something, I should think, about meeting in London.”
“But is there anything in—this gentleman that he wouldn’t like?”
“I don’t know of anything.”
Impossible to pursue the dialogue; Marian moved uneasily, then rose, said something about putting the letter away, and left the room.
Shortly after, Alfred Yule entered the house. It was no uncommon thing for him to come home in a mood of silent moroseness, and this evening the first glimpse of his face was sufficient warning. He entered the dining-room and stood on the hearthrug reading an evening paper. His wife made a pretence of straightening things upon the table.
“Well?” he exclaimed irritably. “It’s after five; why isn’t dinner served?”
“It’s just coming, Alfred.”
Even the average man of a certain age is an alarming creature when dinner delays itself; the literary man in such a moment goes beyond all parallel. If there be added the fact that he has just returned from a very unsatisfactory interview with a publisher, wife and daughter may indeed regard the situation as appalling. Marian came in, and at once observed her mother’s frightened face.
“Father,” she said, hoping to make a diversion, “Mr. Hinks has sent you his new book, and wishes—”
“Then take Mr. Hinks’s new book back to him, and tell him that I have quite enough to do without reading tedious trash. He needn’t expect that I’m going to write a notice of it. The simpleton pesters me beyond endurance. I wish to know, if you please,” he added with savage calm, “when dinner will be ready. If there’s time to write a few letters, just tell me at once, that I mayn’t waste half an hour.”
Marian resented this unreasonable anger, but she durst not reply.
At that moment the servant appeared with a smoking joint, and Mrs. Yule followed carrying dishes of vegetables. The man of letters seated himself and carved angrily. He began his meal by drinking half a glass of ale; then he ate a few mouthfuls in a quick, hungry way, his head bent closely over the plate. It happened commonly enough that dinner passed without a word of conversation, and that seemed likely to be the case this evening.
To his wife Yule seldom addressed anything but a curt inquiry or caustic comment; if he spoke humanly at table it was to Marian.
Ten minutes passed; then Marian resolved to try any means of clearing the atmosphere.
“Mr. Quarmby gave me a message for you,” she said. “A friend of his, Nathaniel Walker, has told him that Mr. Rackett will very likely offer you the editorship of The Study.”
Yule stopped in the act of mastication. He fixed his eyes intently on the sirloin for half a minute; then, by way of the beer-jug and the saltcellar, turned them upon Marian’s face.
“Walker told him that? Pooh!”
“It was a great secret. I wasn’t to breathe a word to anyone but you.”
“Walker’s a fool and Quarmby’s an ass,” remarked her father.
But there was a tremulousness in his bushy eyebrows; his forehead half unwreathed itself; he continued to eat more slowly, and as if with appreciation of the viands.
“What did he say? Repeat it to me in his words.”
Marian did so, as nearly as possible. He listened with a scoffing expression, but still his features relaxed.
“I don’t credit Rackett with enough good sense for such a proposal,” he said deliberately. “And I’m not very sure that I should accept it if it were made. That fellow Fadge has all but ruined the paper. It will amuse me to see how long it takes him to make Culpepper’s new magazine a distinct failure.”
A silence of five minutes ensued; then Yule said of a sudden.
“Where is Hinks’s book?”
Marian reached it from a side table; under this roof, literature was regarded almost as a necessary part of table garnishing.
“I thought it would be bigger than this,” Yule muttered, as he opened the volume in a way peculiar to bookish men.
A page was turned down, as if to draw attention to some passage. Yule put on his eyeglasses, and soon made a discovery which had the effect of completing the transformation of his visage. His eyes glinted, his chin worked in pleasurable emotion. In a moment he handed the book to Marian, indicating the small type of a footnote; it embodied an effusive eulogy—introduced apropos of some literary discussion—of “Mr. Alfred Yule’s critical acumen, scholarly research, lucid style,” and sundry other distinguished merits.
“That is kind of him,” said Marian.
“Good old Hinks! I suppose I must try to get him half-a-dozen readers.”
“May I see?” asked Mrs. Yule, under her breath, bending to Marian.
Her daughter passed on the volume, and Mrs. Yule read the footnote with that look of slow apprehension which is so pathetic when
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