New Grub Street

"New Grub Street" is George Gissing's 1891 novel set in the writing circles of London in the 1880s. A place that became synonymous with the writing of hack literature, Grub Street is a street in London, England and represents the setting of the novel. It is here that talented and cerebral novelist Edwin Reardon and the semi-scrupulous Jasper Milvain attempt to pursue success, love, and—often above all else—money. As a realistic picture of the literary life in late Victorian England, New Grub Street has few rivals. This classic tale of money versus morals is considered Gissing's masterpiece and would make for a fantastic addition to any bookshelf. Contents include: “A Man of his Day”, “The House of Yule”, “Holiday”, “An Author and his Wife”, “The Way Hither”, “Practical Friend”, “Marian's Home”, “To The Winning Side”, “Invita Minerva”, “The Friends of the Family”, “Respite” “Work Without Hope”, “A Warning”, “Recruits”, etc. George Robert Gissing (1857–1903) was a British novelist. From 1880 to 1903, he published 23 novels, and also worked as a teacher and tutor during his life. Other notable works by this author include: “The Nether World” (1889) and “The Odd Women” (1893).

Connects British and American literature to a changing media landscape in an era of innovation.

George Gissing’s The Odd Women dramatizes key issues relating to class and gender in late-Victorian culture: the changing relationship between the sexes, the social impact of ‘odd’ or ‘redundant’ women, the cultural impact of ‘the new woman,’ and the opportunities for and conditions of employment in the expanding service sector of the economy. At the heart of these issues as many late Victorians saw them was a problem of the imbalance in the ratio of men to women in the population. There were more females than males, which meant that more and more women would be left unmarried; they would be ‘odd’ or ‘redundant,’ and would be forced to be independent and to find work to support themselves. In the Broadview edition, Gissing’s text is carefully annotated and accompanied by a range of documents from the period that help to lay out the context in which the book was written. In Gissing’s story, Virginia Madden and her two sisters are confronted upon the death of their father with sudden impoverishment. Without training for employment, and desperate to maintain middle-class respectability, they face a daunting struggle. In Rhoda Nunn, a strong feminist, Gissing also presents a strong character who draws attention overtly to the issues behind the novel. The Odd Women is one of the most important social novels of the late nineteenth century.

Grub Street was a real place, a place of poverty and vice. It was also a metaphor for journalists and other writers of ephemeral publications and, by implication, the infant newspaper industry. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, journalists were held in low regard, even by their fellow journalists who exchanged torrents of mutual abuse in the pages of their newspapers. But Grub Street's vitality and its battles with authority laid the foundations of modern Fleet Street. In this book, Bob Clarke examines the origination and development of the English newspaper from its early origin in the broadsides of the sixteenth century, through the burgeoning of the press during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to its arrival as a respectable part of the establishment in the nineteenth century. Along the way this narrative is illuminated with stories of the characters who contributed to the growth of the English press in all its rich variety of forms, and how newspapers tailored their contents to particular audiences. As well as providing a detailed chronological history, the volume focuses on specific themes important to the development of the English newspaper. These include such issues as state censorship and struggles for the freedom of the press, the growth of advertising and its effect on editorial policy, the impact on editorial strategies of taxation policy, increased literacy rates and social changes, the rise of provincial newspapers and the birth of the Sunday paper and the popular press. The book also describes the content of newspapers, and includes numerous extracts and illustrations that vividly portray the way in which news was reported to provide a colourful picture of the social history of their times. Written in a lively and engaging manner, this volume will prove invaluable to anyone with an interest in English social history, print culture or journalism.

Robert Darnton introduces us to the shadowy world of pirate publishers, garret scribblers, under-the-cloak book peddlers, smugglers, and police spies that composed the literary underground of the Enlightenment. By drawing on an ingenious selection of previously hidden sources, he reveals for the first time the fascinating story of this eighteenth-century counterculture that has virtually disappeared from history.