George Gissing and the Place of Realism

This collection explores Gissings place in the narrative of fin-de-siècle literature. Together, chapters here theorise how late-Victorian spatial and generic norms are confronted, explored and performed in Gissings works. In addition to presenting new readings of the major novels and introducing readers to lesser-known works, the collection advocates Gissings importance as a journalist, short story, and travel writer. It also recognises Gissing as a central proponent in the late-Victorian realism debate. The book, like todays nineteenth-century studies, is interdisciplinary. It includes familiar interpretive approachesbiographical, historicist, and comparativetogether with fresh perspectives informed by ecocriticism, materiality, and cultural performance. In addition, it is markedly comparative in scope. Gissing is read alongside familiar authors like Dickens, Ruskin, and Hardy, but also, and more unusually, Nietzsche, Besant, Freud and Foucault. Collectively, these chapters illustrate that Gissing, though attentive to contemporary issues, is neither uncomplicatedly realist nor are his writings uncomplicated historical records of place. See more