GISSING, GEORGE ROBERT (18J7-1903)

This article appears in Volume V12, Page 52 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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GISSING, GEORGE ROBERT (18J7-1903) , English novelist, was born at Wakefield on the 22nd of November 1857. He was educated at the Quaker boarding-school of Alderley Edge and at

Owens

OWENS, JOHN (1790-1846)

College, Manchester. His life, especially its earlier period, was spent in great poverty, mainly in London, though he was for a time also in the United States, supporting him-self chiefly by private teaching. He published his first novel, Workers in the Dawn, in 1880. The Unclassed (1884) and

Isabel

ISABEL

Clarendon (1886) followed. Demos (1886), a novel dealing with. socialistic ideas, was, however, the first to attract attention. It was followed by a

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of novels remarkable for their pictures of lower middle class life. Gissing's own experiences had pre-occupied him with poverty and its brutalizing effects on character. He made no attempt at popular writing, and for a long time the sincerity of his

work

WORK

was appreciated only by a limited public. Among his more characteristic novels were: Thyrza (1887), A Life's Morning (1888), The Nether World (1889), New
Grub Street (1891), Born in

Exile

EXILE (Lat. exsilium or exilium, from exsul or exul, which is derived from ex, out of, and the root sal, to go, seen in salire, to leap,
consul
- CONSUL
- CONSUL (in Gr. generally ihraros,ashortened form of errpavgybs 8hraeos, i.e. praetor maximus)
, &c.; the connexion with solum, soil, country is now generally considered wrong)

(1892j, The Odd Women (1893), In the Year of

Jubilee

JUBILEE (or JUBILE), YEAR OF

(1894), The Whirlpool (1897). Others, e.g. The Town Traveller (1901), indicate a humorous faculty, but the prevailing note of his novels is that of the struggling life of the shabby-genteel and lower classes and the conflict between education and circumstances. The quasi-autobiographical Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903) reflects throughout Gissing's studious and retiring tastes. He was a good classical scholar and had a minute acquaintance with the

late

LATE

Latin historians, and with Italian antiquities; and his posthumous Veranilda (1904), a historical romance of Italy in the time of Theodoric the Goth, was the outcome of his favourite studies. Gissing's powers as a literary critic are shown in his admirable study on Charles Dickens (1898). A book of travel, By the Ionian Sea, appeared in Igor. He died at St Jean de Luz in the Pyrenees on the 28th of December 1903.
See also the introductory essay by T. Seccombe to The

House

HOUSE
HOUSE (O. Eng. hiss, a word common to Teutonic languages, cf. Dut. huis, Ger. Haus; in
Gothic
- GOTHIC
it is only found in gudhiss, a temple; it may be ultimately connected with the root of " hide," conceal)

of Cobwebs (1906), a posthumous volume of Gissing's short stories.

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