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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He brooded for a little.
“I suppose there must be some rich man somewhere who has read one or two of my books with a certain interest. If only I could encounter him and tell him plainly what a cursed state I am in, perhaps he would help me to some means of earning a couple of pounds a week. One has heard of such things.”
“In the old days.”
“Yes. I doubt if it ever happens now. Coleridge wouldn’t so easily meet with his Gillman nowadays. Well, I am not a Coleridge, and I don’t ask to be lodged under any man’s roof; but if I could earn money enough to leave me good long evenings unspoilt by fear of the workhouse—”
Amy turned away, and presently went to look after her little boy.
A few days after this they had a visit from Milvain. He came about ten o’clock in the evening.
“I’m not going to stay,” he announced. “But where’s my copy of Margaret Home? I am to have one, I suppose?”
“I have no particular desire that you should read it,” returned Reardon.
“But I have read it, my dear fellow. Got it from the library on the day of publication; I had a suspicion that you wouldn’t send me a copy. But I must possess your opera omnia.”
“Here it is. Hide it away somewhere.—You may as well sit down for a few minutes.”
“I confess I should like to talk about the book, if you don’t mind. It isn’t so utterly and damnably bad as you make out, you know. The misfortune was that you had to make three volumes of it. If I had leave to cut it down to one, it would do you credit. The motive is good enough.”
“Yes. Just good enough to show how badly it’s managed.”
Milvain began to expatiate on that well-worn topic, the evils of the three-volume system.
“A triple-headed monster, sucking the blood of English novelists. One might design an allegorical cartoon for a comic literary paper. By the by, why doesn’t such a thing exist?—a weekly paper treating of things and people literary in a facetious spirit. It would be caviar to the general, but might be supported, I should think. The editor would probably be assassinated, though.”
“For anyone in my position,” said Reardon, “how is it possible to abandon the three volumes? It is a question of payment. An author of moderate repute may live on a yearly three-volume novel—I mean the man who is obliged to sell his book out and out, and who gets from one to two hundred pounds for it. But he would have to produce four one-volume novels to obtain the same income; and I doubt whether he could get so many published within the twelve months. And here comes in the benefit of the libraries; from the commercial point of view the libraries are indispensable. Do you suppose the public would support the present number of novelists if each book had to be purchased? A sudden change to that system would throw three-fourths of the novelists out of work.”
“But there’s no reason why the libraries shouldn’t circulate novels in one volume.”
“Profits would be less, I suppose. People would take the minimum subscription.”
“Well, to go to the concrete, what about your own one-volume?”
“All but done.”
“And you’ll offer it to Jedwood? Go and see him personally. He’s a very decent fellow, I believe.”
Milvain stayed only half an hour. The days when he was wont to sit and talk at large through a whole evening were no more; partly because of his diminished leisure, but also for a less simple reason—the growth of something like estrangement between him and Reardon.
“You didn’t mention your plans,” said Amy, when the visitor had been gone some time.
“No.”
Reardon was content with the negative, and his wife made no further remark.
The result of advertising the flat was that two or three persons called to make inspection. One of them, a man of military appearance, showed himself anxious to come to terms; he was willing to take the tenement from next quarter-day (June), but wished, if possible, to enter upon possession sooner than that.
“Nothing could be better,” said Amy in colloquy with her husband. “If he will pay for the extra time, we shall be only too glad.”
Reardon mused and looked gloomy. He could not bring himself to regard the experiment before him with hopefulness, and his heart sank at the thought of parting from Amy.
“You are very anxious to get rid of me,” he answered, trying to smile.
“Yes, I am,” she exclaimed; “but simply for your own good, as you know very well.”
“Suppose I can’t sell this book?”
“You will have a few pounds. Send your ‘Pliny’ article to The Wayside. If you come to an end of all your money, mother shall lend you some.”
“I am not very likely to do much work in that case.”
“Oh, but you will sell the book. You’ll get twenty pounds for it, and that alone would keep you for three months. Think—three months of the best part of the year at the seaside! Oh, you will do wonders!”
The furniture was to be housed at Mrs. Yule’s. Neither of them durst speak of selling it; that would have sounded too ominous. As for the locality of Reardon’s retreat, Amy herself had suggested Worthing, which she knew from a visit a few years ago; the advantages were its proximity to London, and the likelihood that very cheap lodgings could be found either in the town or near it. One room would suffice for the hapless author, and his expenses, beyond a trifling rent, would be confined to mere food.
Oh yes, he might manage on considerably less than a pound a week.
Amy was in much better spirits than for a long time; she appeared to have convinced herself
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