New Grub Street Series

'If only I had the skill, I would produce novels out-trashing the trashiest that ever sold fifty thousand copies' In New Grub Street George Gissing re-created a microcosm of London's literary society as he had experienced it. His novel is at once a major social document and a story that draws us irresistibly into the twilit world of Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist, and his friends and acquaintances in Grub Street including Jasper Milvain, an ambitious journalist, and Alfred Yule, an embittered critic. Here Gissing brings to life the bitter battles (fought out in obscure garrets or in the Reading Room of the British Museum) between integrity and the dictates of the market place, the miseries of genteel poverty and the damage that failure and hardship do to human personality and relationships.

The narrative revolves around two contrasting writers: Edwin Reardon, a talented yet commercially unsuccessful novelist who is introspective and reserved, and Jasper Milvain, an ambitious journalist who embodies a mix of hard work and cynicism. Their differing approaches to writing and the literary world of late Victorian society highlight themes of ambition, morality, and the evolving nature of literature. The dynamic between these characters explores the struggles and ethical dilemmas faced by writers during this period.