From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

New Grub Street

George Gissing

Start date: February 1, 2017

Finish date: February 28, 2017

Discussion: Side Reads - Fiction

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Side Reads - Fiction

* Suggest a Fiction Side Read
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What Members Thought

Feb 16, 2015 Sera rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, own, 1001-books, favorites, literary-fiction

New Grub Street is my second Gissing book, and he's now become solidified as my favorite Victorian author hand's down.

The book involves three primary groups of characters who are engaged in some form of literary or journalistic occupation: the Reardons, the Yules and the Milvians. There are some important characters ancillary to these families, but the primary story involves the three families and how their occupational pursuits impact their personal lives. Gissing provides interesting commentar ...more

9 likes · Like · see review

Apr 15, 2016 Dawn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, audiobook

I enjoyed this story and its take on the publishing industry in the late nineteenth century. It follows the lives of several authors and shows how their lives improve, or not, as they follow a writing career.

I found it interesting to see how much the attitude and general workings of the industry are still very similar to what they were then. Though I do have a perception that it is much more difficult to get published now than it was then. The technology might have changed but the essence still ...more

6 likes · Like · see review

Jul 28, 2022 Pamela rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: boxall-1001-read, guardian-1000-read

For some reason, I’d thought this book was about the newspaper industry! It’s actually a picture of the literary world in late Victorian London - novelists, literary reviewers, writers of short stories and articles, all trying to find financial success and renown in a rapidly changing environment - and is a rather bitter but darkly amusing picture at that.

The two main protagonists are Edward Reardon, a formerly successful novelist with lofty ideals who is struggling to recapture that success, an ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Nov 11, 2019 Jenny rated it did not like it

Shelves: guardian-1000-state-of-the-nation

After a few disastrous attempts, I’ve decided literary realism/ naturalism is not for me.
My husband and I have a running joke. By nature I am an optimist, an idealist. He declares himself a realist and I tease him that he’s a pessimist.
In reacting against romanticism, naturalism swings too far in the opposite direction, as most reactionaries do. They declare themselves realists as they draw an unrelieved picture of the multiple ways that humans can be petty and unjust. In my view they are pess ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Feb 16, 2017 Rachel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, classics, feminism, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die

3.5. Wow what a cynical ending! I'm not sure what to make of that, yet again Gissing writes plots like nothing I would expect from this time period. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Apr 02, 2014 Gill rated it liked it

I've reached chapter seven and I've decided to stop reading the book. The reason being that I find the narrator/Gissing's comments re the 'lower' classes very offensive.

I wouldn't find it acceptable if it were similar comments about a particular race or religion, and I don't like it here either. It can't be justified as being customary at the time Gissing wrote this, since there are plenty of other authors from that period who don't express themselves like this.

Edited to say,that I was encourage ...more

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