The Heroic Life of George Gissing, Part I:

1857–1888

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Pierre Coustillas

The Heroic Life of George Gissing

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 and over a hundred short stories, as well as works of literary criticism and a travelogue. This ambitious three-volume biography examines both his life and writing 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.

Part I covers Gissing’s early life up until his establishment as a writer of moderate critical success. Gissing’s precocious intellectual development propelled him to a scholarship at Owens College (now the University of Manchester), but while there his ill-advised love affair with the prostitute Marianne (Nell) Harrison led to him stealing to keep her off the streets and thence to prison. On release, he sailed for America and lived for a while in Chicago. It was during this period that he got his first chance as a writer, producing short stories for the Chicago Tribune. On his return to England Gissing married Nell and began teaching and writing novels. These early works are notable for their focus on poverty and the working classes.

Sample pages

• Introduction
• Index

Readership

Literature, Nineteenth-Century Studies

Contents

Foreword and Acknowledgements
Introduction
I: Hopes Destroyed
1 Ancestry, Childhood and Family Life (November 1857–December 1870)
2 Alderley Edge and Manchester (January 1871–August 1876)
3 The American Experiment (September 1876–October 1877)
II: Hard Times
4 Penury in London (October 1877–June 1880)
5 On the Way to Professional Writing (July 1880–August 1882)
6 Defying Mrs Grundy (September 1882–June 1884)
7 Between Two Worlds (June 1884–April 1886)
8 A Short-Lived Success (April 1886–September 1888)
Notes
Index

Reviews

'The Heroic Life of George Gissing will delight his admirers'
– Anthony Quinn, The Observer (read the full review here)

'a fitting culmination to what is very nearly a lifetime's work'
– D J Taylor, The Times Literary Supplement (2011 Books of the Year)

'a biography that must come close to being definitive'
– Bouwe Postmus, The Gissing Journal

'a book marked by unprecedented detail. Recommended'
– M S Vogeler, CHOICE

'detailed, authoritative, compendius'
– D J Taylor, Literary Review

'an unequivocal accomplishment, and a thoroughly enjoyable read'
– Fiona Coll, The Floating Academy (read the full review here)

Related titles

• Americans on Fiction, 1776–1900
• The Heroic Life of George Gissing, Part II: 1888–1897
• The Heroic Life of George Gissing, Part III: 1897–1903
• Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part I: George Eliot, Charles Dickens and Alfred, Lord Tennyson by their Contemporaries
• Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part IV: Henry James, Edith Wharton and Oscar Wilde by their Contemporaries
• Lives of Victorian Literary Figures, Part V: Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Wilkie Collins and William Thackeray by their contemporaries
• The Correspondence of H G Wells
• The Journals and Diaries of E M Forster
• Writing the Self: Henry James and America

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