George Robert Gissing

George Robert Gissing, writer

George Robert Gissing (born November 22, 1857 in Wakefield , Yorkshire , † December 28, 1903 in Ispoure , Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port , southern France) was an English writer.

In speaking to George Orwell , he was “a chronicler of vulgarity, misery and failure.” He had lost faith in the moral resilience of wage or line money slaves as well as their leaders early on. Criticism counts him among the most important English-speaking storytellers of the transition from realism to naturalism . For Valentine Cunningham he is “England's Zola”. The lung sick “pessimistic portrayal of the London proletariat” died at the age of 46.

life and work

At the age of 13 Gissing lost his father, a pharmacist. A scholarship enables the intelligent boy interested in literature to attend college. He is enthusiastic about Arthur Schopenhauer , Émile Zola , Charles Dickens (about whom he later wrote a famous study) and the Russian storytellers Iwan Sergejewitsch Turgenew and Fyodor Dostoyewski . He shows brilliant achievements, even wins the college-awarded Shakespeare Prize, but his love for the young prostitute Marianne Helen Harrison, known as "Nell", puts an early end to his academic career: when he can no longer support Nell, he steals from fellow students which earned him a month in prison (in Manchester ) and expulsion from college.

In 1876, at the suggestion of his mother and thanks to the help of friends, Gissing embarked for the United States, where he was able to stay afloat with short stories for the Chicago Tribune after a period of hunger . Returned after a year, he went to London with Nell to try his hand at writing a novel. In 1879 he married Nell. In 1880 Gissing's brother William dies of tuberculosis . Gissing's wife is addicted to alcohol. In 1882 he separated from her, but continued to support her financially - within the framework of his meager income, which he earned mainly from private tuition. She died in 1888 of complications from alcoholism and syphilis .

A second marriage that Gissing entered into in 1891 with the daughter of a stonemason, Edith Underwood, was also unhappy. The couple go to Exeter . Edith shows little understanding for literature, on the other hand she is said to be prone to outbursts of anger and violence. He separates from her in 1897. Of the two sons they shared, one stayed with Edith, the other was housed with Gissing's sisters in Wakefield before they separated. In 1902 Edith was officially declared insane and sent to an institution. In all this confusion of marriage, Gissing found comfort in the social reformer Clara Collet , whom he had known since the summer of 1893. After Gissing's early death (1903), Clara still looks after Edith († 1917) and the sons. She also remains on friendly terms with his French lover, Gabrielle, although Collet himself had hoped for a passionate relationship with Gissing.

Tuition and line fees

Gissing's self-published debut novel Workers in the Dawn from 1880 proves to be a failure. His self-confidence is badly shaken. He experiences some encouragement from the criticism four years later for Unclassed . The novel Demos (1886), which already addresses corruption among workers' leaders, finally helps him achieve his “breakthrough” . Now his novels follow almost every year, but he is unfit for business, the publishers take advantage of him. In the years 1888–90 he stayed in Greece and Italy for several months. He has since given up teaching. His next novel The Emancipated (1890) is about free-thinking British emigrants. In the dawn of the decade, Gissing wrote his most famous works, including New Grub Street (line money) and Born in Exile .

Meanwhile, some critics are raising Gissing to the rank of George Meredith or Thomas Hardy . He made the acquaintance of prominent colleagues such as Henry James , HG Wells , Joseph Conrad . In 1897/98 he traveled to Italy again. On his return, he meets the French woman Gabrielle Fleury, who wants to translate line money . They fall in love, correspond extensively and settle in France in 1899. According to Cunningham, this mistress - along with her mom, who is inclined to take horse cures - does not exactly contribute to Gissing's recovery. In 1901 Gissing combined a visit to HG Wells in England with a stay in a sanatorium in Suffolk . In 1903 he published his reflections The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft , which once again earned him much applause. The completely overworked, rushed and exhausted Gissing dies at the end of the same year: The trigger is a cold that he catches on a winter hike.

Among barbarians

As Russell Kirk explains - and also emerges from Ryecroft - Gissing had already turned away from his socialist youth ideals by 1885. He smiled at them and opposed the “brutal rule of the semi-educated mob” with his belief in an “aristocracy of the mind”, which Jules Romains seems to anticipate. This "hostility to the masses" was also criticized by literary scholars in the GDR. Orwell's labeling is similar, but with no spell. For him, Gissing suffered from the outdated Victorian conventions that made everyday life a pain for poor but intelligent swallowers. The pillars of these norms were money and women. Gissing would have liked to get a little prosperity so that he could easily immerse himself in cultivated reading, but he was not interested in what we would call “social justice”. He admired neither the working class as such nor democracy. "He didn't want to speak for the crowd, but for the extraordinary, sensitive man isolated among barbarians."

Orwell went on to say that Gissing was interested in the individual. The fact that he looked benevolently at its different, often conflicting motifs and knew how to make a believable story out of their collision gave Gissing an exceptional position among English writers. It doesn't hurt if his prose is never beautiful in the traditional sense, and sometimes even horrible. Also Meyers Lexicon raises Gissing novels early on the excellent character and genre studies indicate, however, to certify him a "classic style". Instead, it criticizes the "inconsistent structure". For Kindler finally Gissing narrative style has "never completely from the Victorian tradition" solved.

Works

• Workers in the Dawn , novel, 1880
• The Unclassed , novel, 1884
• Isabel Clarendon , novel, 1885
• Demos , Roman, 1886
• Thyrza , Roman, 1887
• A Life's Morning , Roman, 1888
• The Nether World , novel, 1889
• The Emancipated , Roman, 1890
• New Grub Street , Roman, 1891, German line money , Nördlingen 1986, series Die Andere Bibliothek
• Denzil Quarrier , novel, 1892
• Born In Exile , novel, 1892
• The Odd Women , Roman, 1893, German The redundant women , Frankfurt / Main 1999
• In the Year of Jubilee , novel, 1894
• Eve's Ransomware , novel, 1895
• The Paying Guest , Roman, 1895
• Sleeping Fires , novel, 1895
• The Whirlpool , Roman, 1897
• Human Odds and Ends , Short Stories, 1898
• The Town Traveler , Roman, 1898
• Charles Dickens: A Critical Study , 1898
• The Crown Of Life , novel, 1899
• By the Ionian Sea , 1901, German Am Ionian Sea: a foray through southern Italy , Schellenberg / Lichtenstein 2003
• Our Friend the Charlatan , Roman, 1901
• The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft , Reflections, 1903

published posthumously

• Veranilda , Roman, 1903 (unfinished)
• Will Warburton , novel, 1905
• The House of Cobwebs , short stories, 1906
• Stories and Sketches , 1938

literature

• HG Wells: George Gissing , in: Monthly Review August 1904
• Frank Swinnerton: George Gissing: A Critical Study , London 1912
• Edward Clodd: Memories , London 1926, 165-195
• Anton Weber: George Gissing and the social question , Leipzig 1932
• SV Gapp: George Gissing: Classicist , Philadelphia 1936
• H. Sieper: Psychological studies on the novels George Robert Gissing , Munich 1937
• MC Donelly: George Gissing: Grave comedian , Cambridge (Massachusetts), 1954 (. With bibliography Separate bibliographies leads Kindler on)
• Morley Roberts: The Private Life of Henry Maitland - a Portrait of George Gissing , London 1958
• AC Ward: Gissing , London 1959
• RG Malbone: George Gissing: Novelist , Minneapolis 1960
• Jacob Korg: George Gissing. A Critical Biography , Seattle (Washington) 1963, London 1980
• OH Davis: George Gissing: A Study in Literary Leanings , Croydon 1965
• Pierre Coustillas (Ed.): Collected Articles on George Gissing , London 1968
• Pierre Coustillas (Ed.): George Gissing: Essays and Fiction , Baltimore (Md) 1970
• Pierre Coustillas and J. Spiers: The Rediscovery of George Gissing: A Reader's Guide , London 1971
• Pierre Coustillas and C. Partridge (Eds.): Gissing: The Critical Heritage , London 1972
• Pierre Coustillas (Ed.): Henry Hick's Recollections of George Gissing , London 1973
• Gillian Tindall: The Born Exile: George Gissing , London 1974
• ADB Poole: Gissing in Context , London 1975
• LF Courtney: George Gissing: Victorian , Emory University 1975
• Jacob Korg: "George Gissing: Humanist in Exile", in: RA Levine (Ed.): The Victorian Experience: The Novelists , Athens (Oh.) 1976, pp. 239-273.
• Michael Collie: George Gissing. A Bibliography , London 1977
• Michael Collie: The Alien Art: A Critical Study of George Gissing's Novels , Folkestone 1978
• John Goode: George Gissing: Ideology and Fiction , London 1978
• J.-P. Michaux (Ed.): George Gissing: Critical Essays , London 1981
• AC Ward: "George Gissing", in: I. Scott-Kilvert (Ed.): British Writers , New York 1982, Volume 5, pp. 423-438
• John Halperin: Gissing: A Life in Books , Oxford 1982 and 1987
• David Grylls: The Paradox of Gissing , London 1986
• Mark Connelly: Orwell and Gissing , New York 1997
• John Keahey: A Sweet and Glorious Land: Revisiting the Ionian Sea , St. Martin's Press 2000 (following in Gissing's footsteps throughout southern Italy 100 years later)
• Deborah McDonald: Clara Collet 1860–1948: An Educated Working Woman , London 2004
• Paul Delany: George Gissing: a life , London 2008, ISBN 978-0-297-85212-4 (Cunningham gives a positive review, also in comparison with other biographies)
• Pierre Coustillas: The Heroic Life of George Gissing, Part I: 1857-1888 , London 2011, ISBN 978-1-8489-3171-8 , Part II: 1888-1897, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012, ISBN 978-1 -84893-173-2 ; Part III 1897-1903, London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012, ISBN 978-1-84893-175-6
• John Carey: Hatred of the masses. Intellectuals 1880-1939. Göttingen 1996, pp. 117-145.

In Peter Ackroyd's book Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem from 1994, Gissing is one of the novelists.

Web links

• Literature by and about George Robert Gissing in the catalog of the German National Library
• The Gissing Journal

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} George Orwell 1948 , accessed August 23, 2011
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Valentine Cunningham 2008 , accessed August 23, 2011
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Kindler's New Literature Lexicon , Munich Edition 1988
4. ^ Deborah McDonald , accessed Sept. 25, 2017
5. ↑ According to Orwell, Gissing's death is described in HG Well's experiment in Autobiography from 1934.
6. ^ The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot , 1953
7. ↑ Georg Seehase (Ed.): English Literature at a Glance , Leipzig 1968, page 344
8. ↑ 7th edition, Volume 5 from 1926
9. ↑ From the milieu of the London wage clerks. At the end of Gissing's “masterpiece” (Orwell), Gissing deliberately reversed the Victorian novel convention, says Seehase, page 298. “The talented, art-conscious and altruistic are hunted down, while the windy, agile cynics make their way and the beautiful ones Marry widows of those who fell on the battlefield of literary commerce. "
10. ↑ The focus of this “brilliant study of misguided, pathological ambition and false shame” ( Kindlers ) is an atheist newspaper writer whose attempt at social advancement fails.
11. ↑ Book and author are included in Norman Douglas travel report Old Calabria in 1915 .
12. ^ Biographical novel, first published in 1912. The writer Morley (1857-1942) was friends with Gissing for many years.