The Heroic Life Of George Gissing

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 ambitious three-volume biography on Gissing examines both his life and writing both chronologically and in close detail. Part II assesses the period of Gissing’s greatest authorial triumphs. His most critically acclaimed works, The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893) date from this time.

This biography on Gissing examines both his life and writing both chronologically and in close detail. Part II assesses the period of Gissing's greatest authorial triumphs.

This ambitious three-volume biography on Gissing examines both his life and writing both chronologically and in close detail. This final volume in Coustillas’s prodigious biography examines the turbulent last years of the author’s life and his literary afterlife.

George Gissing (1857-1903) lived a life worthy of the plot from one of his own novels. An exceptionally gifted man, born into relatively genteel comfort, he nonetheless managed to enter into two disastrous marriages with working-class women, got thrown out of university for stealing, spent a month doing hard labour in prison and died before the age of fifty. It is all the more surprising then, that he still managed to write twenty-three novels, over a hundred short stories, as well as works of literary criticism and a travelogue. This ambitious three-volume biography on Gissing examines both his life and writing both chronologically and in close detail. Coustillas's exhaustive research is based on all the known surviving Gissing correspondence, Gissing's works and every piece of literary criticism on Gissing from 1880 onwards. Press archives from England, America, the former Colonies, France and Germany have all been consulted. This approach, by the foremost authority on Gissing, allows new insights into his life and work.--From publisher website.