The House of Cobwebs

Download or read book The House of Cobwebs written by George Gissing and published by IndyPublish.com. This book was released on 1906 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The distinctive qualities of Gissing at the time of his setting forth were a scholarly style, rather fastidious and academic in its restraint, and the personal discontent, slightly morbid, of a self-conscious student who finds himself in the position of a sensitive woman in a crowd. His attitude through life was that of a man who, having set out on his career with the understanding that a second-class ticket is to be provided, allows himself to be unceremoniously hustled into the rough and tumble of a noisy third. Circumstances made him revolt against an anonymous start in life for a refined and educated man under such conditions. They also made him prolific. He shrank from the restraints and humiliations to which the poor and shabbily dressed private tutor is exposed -- revealed to us with a persuasive terseness in the pages of "The Unclassed, New Grub Street, Ryecroft, and the story of "Topham's Chance. Writing fiction in a garret for a sum sufficient to keep body and soul together for the six months following payment was at any rate better than this. The result was a long series of highly finished novels, written in a style and from a point of view which will always render them dear to the studious and the book-centered. . . .