Having just finished reading George Gissing's novel, 'New Grub Street' I was surprised to find a piece about it in the Guardian Culture magazine this weekend. Surprised, because the book was published in 1891, so it is hardly current.
Nevertheless I found the piece interesting and the Guardian writer (Anthony Quinn) summed up my own feelings about the book.
You can access the Guardian article by clicking this link.
The novel is set mainly in London and deals with a group of writers and aspiring writers who experience various levels of success in their endeavours and consequently enjoy the trappings of success or endure the hardships of extreme poverty. The book describes how the consequent lifestyles impact upon the writers themselves and their relationships with others.
It is wonderfully well written in the style prevalent in the late 19th century and I marvel at how people communicate in such a thoughtful and considerate manner whilst enduring the worst kinds of personal hardships. The times were clearly very different to our own.
I will not say more about the storyline or the characters for I feel that the article gives a very good account of those. However returning to my surprise at seeing a recent magazine piece on the subject of such an old book, I can only surmise that this is as a result of the recent success of the BBC Radio 4 comedy programme, 'Ed Reardon's Week'. For two of the main characters in the novel are Edwin Reardon and Jasper Milvain who clearly provide the inspiration for the radio show's title character and his more successful arch rival, Jas Milvain. If you are not familiar with the programme, then I wholeheartedly recommend it.
A little more research revealed that this is not the first reference that the Guardian has made to this novel this year. Back in March, they included the book in their series, 'The 100 Best Novels', placing it at number 28.
I have also included a link to that piece by Robert McCrum.
I note from that that George Orwell regarded George Gissing as 'perhaps the best novelist that England has produced'.
High praise indeed!
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