George Gissing (1[zasłonięte]857-19) lived a life worthy of the
plot from one of his own novels. An exceptionally gifted
man, born into relatively genteel comfort, he
nonetheless managed to enter into two disastrous
marriages with working-class women, got thrown out of
university for stealing, spent a month doing hard labour
in prison and died before the age of fifty. It is all
the more surprising then, that he still managed to write
twenty-three novels and over a hundred short stories, as
well as works of literary criticism and a travelogue.
This ambitious three-volume biography examines both his
life and writing chronologically and in close detail.
Coustillas's exhaustive research is based on all the
known surviving Gissing correspondence, Gissing's works
and every piece of literary criticism on Gissing from
1880 onwards. Press archives from England, America, the
former Colonies, France and Germany have all been
consulted. This approach, by the foremost authority on
Gissing, allows new insights into his life and work.
This final volume in Coustillas's prodigious biography
examines the turbulent last years of the author's life
and his literary afterlife.After the break-up of his
second marriage, Gissing's health began to decline and
he was diagnosed with emphysema, precipitating his
permanent move abroad. In contrast to his personal
problems, his literary reputation soared and he formed
new friendships with other writers of the day, including
Henry James and H G Wells. He wrote Charles Dickens: A
Critical Study (1898), travelled to Rome in the same
year and produced By the Ionian Sea (1901) about his
'rambles' in Calabria. The last of Gissing's books to be
published in his lifetime was The Private Papers of
Henry Ryecroft (1903). The most autobiographical of his
works, it was also his favourite, and the most
widely-read in the years after his death. He died in
France on 28th December 1903. |
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