Analysis of George Gissing’s New Grub Street

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 12, 2025

George Gissing’s tendency to see life as catastrophe is apparent in his most popular and critically acclaimed novel, New Grub Street. Gissing’s personal experience, marked by brief imprisonment, two disastrous marriages, and a lifelong struggle to embody the ideals he projected onto the writing life, are mirrored in the partially autobiographical figure of Edwin Reardon, his novel’s protagonist.

Reardon’s belief in writing as an art contrasts with that of other characters, including his nemesis and antagonist, Jasper Milvain, a journalist whose ambition and greed cause him to view writing and publication as simple business. Milvain considers audience and market and shapes a product to match those considerations, representing the “new” approach to literature. The gentle but hopeless Reardon stands for what he views as literary tradition, considering writing an artistic endeavor based on inspiration.

Gissing’s title came from the actual Grub Street, which, Gissing explained in a letter to his friend Eduard Bertz, had existed in London 150 years prior to his writing the novel. English essayist Alexander Pope and others of his era utilized the name to represent “wretched-authordom.” In his contrast between Reardon and Milvain, Gissing suggested a larger contrast between modern society and that of an older, simpler, and perhaps more idealistic age. However, critic Bernard Bergonzi explains that Gissing, like others, exaggerated the purity of literary pursuits; Daniel Defoe had written more than a century earlier of writing as a “very considerable branch of English commerce.”

While Gissing finds the state of writing deplorable, he does not preach reform for this or any other social ill. Consistent with the seemingly fatalistic attitude that prevented his taking advantage of offers of aid throughout his career, he simply accepted societal ills as immutable forces not to be challenged. He views Reardon, Milvain, Reardon’s wife, Amy, and other characters, including Alfred Yule and his daughter Marian, with nonjudgmental irony.

Milvain must support his sisters, Maud and Dora, and his idea that they write children’s stories rather than work as governesses is both logical and consistent with society’s demands. Marian’s ghostwriting for her father emphasizes the impurity of his endeavors, but the reader retains sympathy for Marian, who is inhumanly pressured by Yule to use her legacy to peg on his scheme to support a periodical he wants to edit.

While Reardon and his friend Biffen, who blends realism with idealism by selling popular journal pieces and teaching fiction writing while working on his own great novel, could become pitiful characters, Gissing respects them both, emphasizing the mechanical approach most writers had to assume toward their work. Publishers demanded three-volume works, due to their commercial superiority to single- or two-volume forms, a truth in 19th-century England.

He also tempers Reardon’s rejection of writing as commodity with his weakness and the doubts he harbors, which no true idealist would. Reardon admits to a certain relativity in life and echoes Gissing’s idea that labels such as “good” and “bad” are fallacies. While Reardon accepts that he will never achieve greatness, he continues to work toward a modicum of success. That may have also been Gissing’s hope.

While his characterizations and sense of place are often compared with those of Charles Dickens, Gissing remained a second-tier writer. Thus, he knew well the character of Reardon and injects no bitterness into the rendition of his protagonist’s death, or the fact that his widow, Amy, marries Milvain following the journalist’s publication of a complimentary article regarding Reardon’s writing.

When Gissing has Mr. Whelpdale tell Reardon, “I’ve been reading your new book. Uncommonly good things in it here and there—uncommonly good,” he allows Reardon the intelligence to understand both the speaker and his comment. He writes, “Whelpdale had the weakness of being unable to tell a disagreeable truth, and a tendency to flattery which had always made Reardon rather uncomfortable.” The remarks irritate Reardon, who easily recognizes insincerity.

Even when Reardon later confronts Milvain for his role in Reardon’s failure, it is without true bitterness: “Your old way of talk isn’t much to my taste, Milvain. It has cost me too much.” He goes on to explain to the surprised Milvain that he has always “glorified success” in a public manner, not to Reardon alone, but always in the presence of others as well, stressing it “as the one end a man ought to keep in view.” Reardon claims, “It’s very much owing to you that I am deserted, not that there’s no hope of my ever succeeding.” Milvain does not pity Reardon but rather feels compassion for a man whose tone “revealed such profound misery.” Reardon does not blame Milvain for turning his own wife against him but rather assumes it is simply his “misfortune.”

To impress the reader on just how practical Milvain can be, Gissing writes a later scene in which Milvain and Marian mention the famous bankruptcy of the successful novelist Sir Walter Scott, who set about to pay his debts in a manner that Milvain explains would be “quite unbusinesslike” in that era. When Marian, who Milvain well knows is the true creative power behind her father, explains that she must use her legacy to support her parents rather than give it to Milvain, he protests, asking whether she is “content to lead a simple, unambitious life [. . .] Or should you prefer your husband to be a man of some distinction?”

Milvain’s brand of ambition precludes love and dedication to anything other than income, yet he hardly proves an evil character. When he and Amy conclude the novel in his comparison of Amy to Marian—“you are a perfect woman, and poor Marian was only a clever school-girl”—the reader understands that in Gissing’s view, the Milvains of the world will seek “the glorious privilege of being independent,” a privilege afforded only by wealth.

Gissing’s novel continues to attract readers who seek to understand better the author and his society. Bergonzi notes that Reardon is recognizable as the too sensitive and conscientious driven protagonist of 20th-century novels, but with an important difference. As part of a “social context,” Reardon seeks an independence from his types; he is destined to fail, lacking the strength to reach that freedom. Readers may admire both Reardon and Milvain, realizing that Gissing had to reconcile Reardon with his fate by allowing him to die, and allow Milvain achievement of a victory that might prove hollow to others but is everything that Milvain desires.

Bibliography
Bergonzi, Bernard. Introduction to New Grub Street by George Gissing. New York: Penguin Books, 1985. 9–26.
Michaux, Jean Pierre, ed. George Gissing: Critical Essays. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble, 1981.
Young, Arthur C., ed. The Letters of George Gissing to Eduard Bertz 1887–1903. New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1961.