George Gissing

Biography

George Gissing (1857–1903) was an English novelist who wrote unflinching portrayals of poverty, class struggle, and the literary life in late Victorian England. Born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, his promising academic career was destroyed by a scandal at Owens College, Manchester. He spent years in poverty in London, experiences that deeply informed novels like New Grub Street (1891), Workers in the Dawn, and The Nether World. New Grub Street, his masterpiece, is considered one of the greatest novels about the literary profession. Gissing wrote over twenty novels and spent his final years in southern France, where he wrote the reflective Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903).