Squalor

Frank Kermode

  • Gissing: A Life in Books by John Halperin
    Oxford, 426 pp, £18.50, September 1982, ISBN 0 19 812677 8
  • George Gissing: Critical Essays edited by Jean-Pierre Michaux
    Vision/Barnes and Noble, 214 pp, £11.95, March 1981, ISBN 0 85478 404 7

The books listed below have been my leisure reading for many weeks, and I have a glimmering as to what it is that prompts the converted to claim so much for Gissing. But my own view, which is very commonplace, remains the same: New Grub Street is a novel of extraordinary power, and without it the oeuvre would be no more than the interesting record of a pained but minor artist.

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[*] Gissing’s own estimate was £1,000, or about £40,000 today.

New Grub Street is published by Penguin (556 pp., £1.95, 1980, 0 14 043 0326).
In the Year of Jubilee and Eve’s Ransom are published by Dover/Constable (404 pp., £4.50, July 1982, 0486 04251 X and 129 pp., £2.25, April 1982, 0486 24016 9).
The Odd Women is published by Virago (336 pp., £3.50, 1980, 086068 140 8).

The following novels by Gissing are available from Harvester: The Paying Guest, 200 pp., £7.50, June 1982, 0 85527 892 7.Born in Exile, 470 pp., £9.95 and £5.95, 1978, 0 85527 872 2.The Whirlpool, 461 pp., £9.95, 1977, 0 85527 789 0.Sleeping Fires, 230 pp., £7.50, 1977, 085527 032 2.Demos: A Story of English Socialism, 524 pp., £9.95 and £4.95, 1975, 0 9017 5933 3.The Crown of Life, 320 pp., £9.95, 1979, 0 85527 692 4. The Town Traveller, 336 pp., £9.95, February 1982, 0 86627 902 8. Our Friend the Charlatan, 480 pp., £9.95, 1976, 0 85527 199 X. Will Warburton, 384 pp., £9.95, February 1982, 0 85527 882 X. Isabel Clarendon, 720 pp., £25, August 1982, 0 7108 0460 0. Denzil Quarrier, 270 pp., £9.95, 1979, 0 85527 712 2.The Emancipated, 484 pp., £9.95, 1977, 0 85527 739 4. Thyrza, 490 pp., £9.95, 1974, 0 901759 94 7. The Nether World, 392 pp., £10.95 and £2.95, February, 0 901759 10 4. The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, 298 pp., £10.95 and £4.95, February, 0 7108 03230The Unclassed, Veranilda and Workers in the Dawn will be published this year; A Life’s Morning is due out in 1984.