George Gissing

Born in Wakefield, England, in 1857, George Gissing became one of the major English novelists of the late Victorian period. He studied at Owens College in Manchester, but his life was marked early by scandal and hardship, experiences that fed the realism and sympathy found throughout his fiction.

He published more than twenty novels, often focusing on the lower middle class, struggling writers, and women facing narrow social choices. Among his best-known works are The Nether World, New Grub Street, and The Odd Women, novels admired for their unsentimental view of urban life and the pressures of work, class, and respectability.

Gissing died in 1903 in France, but his reputation lasted well beyond his lifetime. Readers continue to return to his work for its psychological insight, its vivid picture of Victorian society, and its surprisingly modern understanding of disappointment and endurance.