The Gissing Journal

This ambitious three-volume biography on Gissing examines both his life and writing chronologically and in close detail. Part I covers Gissing’s early life up until his establishment as a writer of moderate critical success.

This comprehensive study of George Gissing’s short stories and related non-fiction is essential reading for students of nineteenth-century realism. For the first time readers will be able to follow the development which transformed Gissing’s unremarkable early stories into the very individual tales that elevated his work to the vanguard of realistic short fiction. Gissing’s American period is notable for its accumulation of themes that were repeatedly refined and adapted for his later work, causality emerging as the dominant voice. On his return to England, shifting political and philosophical beliefs expressed in his non-fiction had a vital impact on his second phase of short fiction, and the part played by realism in the author’s short stories and his writings on Charles Dickens added further dimensions to his work as a whole. By the final phase of Gissing’s remarkable development, it is evident that his interest in the concept of causality as the major force in his short work had been replaced by a more challenging preoccupation with the human psyche. This introduced philosophical, sociological and psychological dimensions to Gissing’s work that established him in the field of short fiction as a leading exponent of late nineteenth-century realism

Gissing and the City: Cultural Crisis and the Making of Books in Late Victorian England addresses the late Victorian cultural crisis and aesthetic revolt in urban life, politics, literature and art, by special reference to the experience of the shocks of the new urban environment, and literary and artistic responses. It does so through interdisciplinary discussion of the novels of George Gissing, whose work is particularly linked to 'the city' and the crisis of urban experience, especially in the archetypal modern imperial city.

This collection of new essays draws attention to the various and complex ways in which scholars and critics have reflected upon and reacted to Charles Dickens’s texts, including his novels, short fiction and journalism. Subsequent to the initial publication of Dickens’s works, writers, visual artists and filmmakers have re-imagined, transposed and transformed them from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Although Reflections on / of Dickens recognizes the writer’s importance as first and foremost a major figure in literature, it nevertheless offers a uniquely vast array of approaches to his literary output, ranging from intertextual and generic strategies, through gender studies, translation studies and comparative literary studies, to issues connected with reception, popular culture, visual culture and performing arts. The diverse thematic preoccupations present in this highly interdisciplinary volume attest to Dickens’s central position in the British canon and his global appeal, while at the same time narrowing the gap between traditional textual analysis and more contextualised readings of his oeuvre, taking into account the socio-cultural and historical circumstances thanks to which his literary reputation continues to flourish.

This collection explores Gissing’s place in the narrative of fin-de-siècle literature. Together, chapters here theorise how late-Victorian spatial and generic norms are confronted, explored and performed in Gissing’s works. In addition to presenting new readings of the major novels and introducing readers to lesser-known works, the collection advocates Gissing’s importance as a journalist, short story, and travel writer. It also recognises Gissing as a central proponent in the late-Victorian realism debate. The book, like today’s nineteenth-century studies, is interdisciplinary. It includes familiar interpretive approaches—biographical, historicist, and comparative—together with fresh perspectives informed by ecocriticism, materiality, and cultural performance. In addition, it is markedly comparative in scope. Gissing is read alongside familiar authors like Dickens, Ruskin, and Hardy, but also, and more unusually, Nietzsche, Besant, Freud and Foucault. Collectively, these chapters illustrate that Gissing, though attentive to contemporary issues, is neither uncomplicatedly realist nor are his writings uncomplicated historical records of place.