Before he was 21 George Gissing conceived the ambition of writing a long series of novels, somewhat in the manner of Balzac, whom he admired. The first of these, Workers in the...

The Jubilee marks the fiftieth year of the reign of Queen Victoria. Dickensian in its sweeping scope of London life, Gissing’s "In the Year of the Jubilee" (1834) depicts the...

Milvain, one of the two central characters of the novel is a modern young man driven by pure financial ambition in navigating his literary career. He accepts that he will always...

Gissing's own life takes a turn for the better and this novel reflects a more optimistic view of life with such prominent themes as spiritual life, importance of love in life,...

Richard Mutimer is a young lower-class working-man who unexpectedly inherits a large fortune. He becomes the leader of a socialist movement and decides to use his inheritance to...

Eve's Ransom is the story of a mechanical draughtsman named Maurice Hilliard, who comes into some money, which enables him to live without working. As part of his resulting...

Godwin Peak, is a star student at Whitelaw College. He wins many academic prizes and his future seems promising. Then his Cockney uncle arrives intending to open an eating-house...

A young wealthy gentleman looses everything in speculation and is forced into a humble life of a grocer. He finds his circumstances tragic at first and keeps his fate secret from...

A cultivated poor young woman Emily Hood from a small town in the north of England works as a governess in a wealthy country family. She falls in love with her employer's son,...

The story of the romantic and sexual initiation of a suburban heroine, Nancy Lord which Gissing wrote after his return from Exeter. He took lodgings with his second wife at 76...