New Grub Street (1891) is a novel by George Gissing about the literary world of London in the 1880s. It contrasts writers who succeed by adapting to the market with those who fail by staying faithful to their art, and paints a bleak picture of literary poverty.
The story
Jasper Milvain, a cynical young journalist, sets out to make his way by writing whatever sells. His friend Edwin Reardon, a sensitive novelist, cannot produce the popular books his wife Amy expects, sinks into poverty and loses her.
Around them, the scholar Alfred Yule and his daughter Marian, who does research for him in the British Museum Reading Room, struggle with debts and disappointment.
The literary market
The novel shows a changing world: cheap magazines, popular journalism, the decline of the three-volume novel and the power of reviewers and editors.
Gissing knew this world from inside, having lived for years from badly paid writing and lessons.
Reception
New Grub Street was published in three volumes by Smith, Elder in 1891. It is now considered his masterpiece and one of the most lucid novels about the profession of writing.
Its title recalls Grub Street, the London street where poor hack writers lived in the eighteenth century.
Anecdotes
The Reading Room
Much of the novel takes place in the Reading Room of the British Museum, which Gissing described as the 'valley of the shadow of books'.
Written in two months
Gissing wrote New Grub Street rapidly, in the autumn of 1890, after many false starts on other books.
Frequently asked questions
What is New Grub Street about?
The struggles of writers in London in the 1880s, between commercial success and artistic integrity.
Who are Milvain and Reardon?
Jasper Milvain is a cynical journalist who succeeds; Edwin Reardon is an honest novelist who fails.
What is Grub Street?
A former London street associated with hack writers, whose name came to mean commercial literature.