George Gissing's Memorandum Book: A Novelist's Notebook, 1895-1902

by George Gissing, Bouwe Postmus (Editor)

This text is one of the last unpublished Gissing documents. It is a small notebook containing observations of people and places, many of which found their way into the books to come out of his last years. There are also entries revealing domestic details of the last years of his second marriage to Edith Underwood, itineraries and other travel details of the holiday in Switzerland in 1899 with the last woman of his life, Gabrielle Fleury. Entries also document the increasingly desperate search for health, his stay in the East Anglian Sanatorium at Nayland, and the attempt to ward off the fatal threat of consumption at Arcachon, all filling out the picture of Gissing, the man and the writer.

82 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1996

About the author

People best know British writer George Robert Gissing for his novels, such as New Grub Street (1891), about poverty and hardship.

This English novelist who published twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.

Born to lower-middle-class parents, Gissing went to win a scholarship to Owens College, the present-day University of Manchester. A brilliant student, he excelled at university, winning many coveted prizes, including the Shakespeare prize in 1875. Between 1891 and 1897 (his so-called middle period) he produced his best works, which include New Grub Street, Born in Exile , The Odd Women , In the Year of Jubilee , and The Whirlpool . The middle years of the decade saw his reputation reach new heights: some critics count him alongside George Meredith and Thomas Hardy, the best novelists of his day. He also enjoyed new friendships with fellow writers such as Henry James, and H.G. Wells, and came into contact with many other up-and-coming writers such as Joseph Conrad and Stephen Crane.