New Grub Street
Two writers stand at the bottom of the literary trade: Reardon, who has talent and a family he cannot support, and Milvain, who has no illusions and a plan. Gissing sets them in a London of lodgings, reviews and three-volume novels, and shows how the market decides which of them survives.
It is a bleak book, and its bleakness is precise. Gissing knew the conditions he describes, having spent years in cheap rooms writing for whatever paid. What makes it readable now is not the pessimism but the accuracy: the way a small success changes a person's manners before it changes their income.
Public-domain status
First published in 1891. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; George Gissing died in 1903, so this work has been free to republish there since 1974.
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