George Gissing

Gissing, George 

Born Nov. 22, 1857, in Wakefield; died Dec. 28, 1903, in St.-Jean-de-Luz, France. English writer.

Gissing described his life in the East End slums in the novels Workers in the Dawn (1880), The Déclassé (1884), Thyrza (vols. 1-3, 1887; Russian translation, 1893), and The Nether World (vols. 1-3, 1889). His best-known novel, Demos: A Story of English Socialism (1886), is distinguished by its antidemocratic tendency. The tragic position of the writer in bourgeois society is depicted in the novel New Grub Street (vols. 1-3, 1891; translated into Russian as Martyrs of the Pen, 1891). Gissing was influenced by Charles Dickens as well as by French naturalistic novels.

WORKS

Selections. [Edited by V. Woolf and A. Gissing.] London, 1929.
Letters to the Members of His Family. London, 1927.
In Russian translation:
Demos. Vestnik Evropy, 1891, nos. 1-5.

REFERENCES

Zinner, E. P. “Tvorchestvo Dzh. Gissinga.” Uch. zap, Leningradskogo ped. in-ta im. A. I. Gertsena: Kafedra vseobshchei literaturi, 1938, vol. 15.
Istoriia angliiskoi literatury, vol. 3. Moscow, 1958.
Donnelly, M. C. George Gissing: Grave Comedian. Cambridge (Mass.) and London, 1954.
Collected Articles on George Gissing. London, 1968.

I. M. KATARSKII