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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But then flashed forth the sputtering whiteness of the electric light, and its ceaseless hum was henceforth a new source of headache. It reminded her how little work she had done today; she must, she must force herself to think of the task in hand. A machine has no business to refuse its duty. But the pages were blue and green and yellow before her eyes; the uncertainty of the light was intolerable. Right or wrong she would go home, and hide herself, and let her heart unburden itself of tears.
On her way to return books she encountered Jasper Milvain. Face to face; no possibility of his avoiding her.
And indeed he seemed to have no such wish. His countenance lighted up with unmistakable pleasure.
“At last we meet, as they say in the melodramas. Oh, do let me help you with those volumes, which won’t even let you shake hands. How do you do? How do you like this weather? And how do you like this light?”
“It’s very bad.”
“That’ll do both for weather and light, but not for yourself. How glad I am to see you! Are you just going?”
“Yes.”
“I have scarcely been here half-a-dozen times since I came back to London.”
“But you are writing still?”
“Oh yes! But I draw upon my genius, and my stores of observation, and the living world.”
Marian received her vouchers for the volumes, and turned to face Jasper again. There was a smile on her lips.
“The fog is terrible,” Milvain went on. “How do you get home?”
“By omnibus from Tottenham Court Road.”
“Then do let me go a part of the way with you. I live in Mornington Road—up yonder, you know. I have only just come in to waste half an hour, and after all I think I should be better at home. Your father is all right, I hope?”
“He is not quite well.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. You are not exactly up to the mark, either. What weather! What a place to live in, this London, in winter! It would be a little better down at Finden.”
“A good deal better, I should think. If the weather were bad, it would be bad in a natural way; but this is artificial misery.”
“I don’t let it affect me much,” said Milvain. “Just of late I have been in remarkably good spirits. I’m doing a lot of work. No end of work—more than I’ve ever done.”
“I am very glad.”
“Where are your out-of-door things? I think there’s a ladies’ vestry somewhere, isn’t there?”
“Oh yes.”
“Then will you go and get ready? I’ll wait for you in the hall. But, by the by, I am taking it for granted that you were going alone.”
“I was, quite alone.”
The “quite” seemed excessive; it made Jasper smile.
“And also,” he added, “that I shall not annoy you by offering my company?”
“Why should it annoy me?”
“Good!”
Milvain had only to wait a minute or two. He surveyed Marian from head to foot when she appeared—an impertinence as unintentional as that occasionally noticeable in his speech—and smiled approval. They went out into the fog, which was not one of London’s densest, but made walking disagreeable enough.
“You have heard from the girls, I think?” Jasper resumed.
“Your sisters? Yes; they have been so kind as to write to me.”
“Told you all about their great work? I hope it’ll be finished by the end of the year. The bits they have sent me will do very well indeed. I knew they had it in them to put sentences together. Now I want them to think of patching up something or other for The English Girl; you know the paper?”
“I have heard of it.”
“I happen to know Mrs. Boston Wright, who edits it. Met her at a house the other day, and told her frankly that she would have to give my sisters something to do. It’s the only way to get on; one has to take it for granted that people are willing to help you. I have made a host of new acquaintances just lately.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Marian.
“Do you know—but how should you? I am going to write for the new magazine, The Current.”
“Indeed!”
“Edited by that man Fadge.”
“Yes.”
“Your father has no affection for him, I know.”
“He has no reason to have, Mr. Milvain.”
“No, no. Fadge is an offensive fellow, when he likes; and I fancy he very often does like. Well, I must make what use of him I can. You won’t think worse of me because I write for him?”
“I know that one can’t exercise choice in such things.”
“True. I shouldn’t like to think that you regard me as a Fadge-like individual, a natural Fadgeite.”
Marian laughed.
“There’s no danger of my thinking that.”
But the fog was making their eyes water and getting into their throats. By when they reached Tottenham Court Road they were both thoroughly uncomfortable. The bus had to be waited for, and in the meantime they talked scrappily, coughily. In the vehicle things were a little better, but here one could not converse with freedom.
“What pestilent conditions of life!” exclaimed Jasper, putting his face rather near to Marian’s. “I wish to goodness we were back in those quiet fields—you remember?—with the September sun warm about us. Shall you go to Finden again before long?”
“I really don’t know.”
“I’m sorry to say my mother is far from well. In any case I must go at Christmas, but I’m afraid it won’t be a cheerful visit.”
Arrived in Hampstead Road he offered his hand for goodbye.
“I wanted to talk about all sorts of things. But perhaps I shall find you again some day.”
He jumped out, and waved his hat in the lurid fog.
Shortly before the end of December appeared the first number of The Current. Yule had once or twice referred to the forthcoming magazine with acrid contempt, and of course he did not purchase a
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