New Grub Street

New Grub Street is an 1891 novel by British author George Gissing. Based on Gissing’s own struggle to find paid work as a fledgling author (and even in the middle of his career), it characterizes the low-paid, low-quality genre known as “hack literature” for which he wrote. The book’s title refers to Grub Street in London, which was known, before Gissing’s time, for its strong presence of hack writers and publishers. The story follows two writers: the talented, reserved, and underemployed novelist Edwin Reardon, and the young, industrious, but cynical journalist Jasper Milvain. The authors have distinctly different attitudes towards the project of writing in general: Reardon views it as a tool for individual self-expression, while Reardon is skeptical whether it has a purpose at all in the modern world. The novel is significant for illuminating the tenuous relationship that the Victorian era had with writers, who often strongly resented the capitalist system that they had no choice but to work within and which undermined their desire to write freely.

The novel begins by introducing Milvain. The quintessential modern youth, he is motivated mainly by money, imagining that a career as a writer will lead to riches and fame. From the beginning, Milvain has a realistic, if pessimistic, take on the nature of the writing industry: he expects to write for bosses he hates, network endlessly, and write articles for periodicals he doesn’t really care about. Reardon has quite a different attitude about writing. He views the writer’s life as a vocation rather than a career, prefers long-form genres (mainly novels), and refuses to mindlessly follow the latest conventions. However, this philosophy is practically unsustainable and lands him in poverty.

In a last-ditch effort to save himself from poverty, Reardon tries to write a novel according to popular convention. However, he turns out to be too talented and uncompromising to accomplish the kind of surface-level novel that most publishers want. The stress of his writing effort causes his relationship with his wife, Amy Yule, to suffer. She leaves him, believing that his unwillingness to conform to the requirements of his industry will only lead her family into a cycle of poverty.



The novel also delves into Amy’s family background. The Yule family comprises her two uncles, a critic, Alfred, and a wealthy man with a physical handicap, John. Alfred has a daughter, Marian, who works as his research assistant. Curious, kind, plain, and humble, Marian goes mostly unnoticed in her modern society, making her a somewhat tragic character. By chance, Marian befriends Milvain’s sisters after their mother dies and they move to London. Through them, Marian meets Milvain and falls in love. Milvain greatly admires Marian for her bold personality, free spirit, and love of learning. However, he is too obsessed with money to marry her. He rebuffs her, hoping to marry a rich woman who can fund his career. Later, he explains that he finds nothing inherently sacred, remarkable, or exciting about romance or marriage; rather, he views permanent partnerships as a form of voluntary self-imprisonment, incentivized by overly serious cultural and economic traditions. He goes so far as to make the misogynistic claim that the act of falling in love with a woman does not demonstrate that that woman is beautiful or interesting and that none are exceptional individuals.

Milvain changes his mind about marrying Marian after John Yule leaves her a large sum of money. However, their engagement unexpectedly thwarts his career in a different way when his boss at The Current, the editor Clement Fadge, learns whom he is marrying. Fadge detests Marian’s father, Alfred Yule, due to a heated libel allegation he hurled against the paper decades ago. Alfred, as a result, refuses to allow Marian to marry Milvain. Marian decides to ignore her father’s interests. However, Alfred starts to go blind, and the medical bills reduce Marian’s (and Milvain’s) inheritance to less than a third of its previous value. Marian is forced to work to help her ailing father, and the money is all but lost.

Milvain quickly shifts his attention to another marriage prospect: Amy Yule. Edwin Reardon dies, still in poverty, after a long battle with his health, but makes amends with his wife before he goes. Milvain learns that Amy has been given double what was Marian’s original inheritance sum, also from John Yule. Moreover, her beauty and charm nicely complement her wealth, representing to Milvain a good deal of social capital for networking events. Interestingly, the conclusion of the story only remarks via a secondhand account that Milvain is happy with his marriage; the narrator refrains from claiming it as truth. In the book’s final paragraphs, the narrator suggests that Milvain is forever burdened and shamed by his decision to squander Marian’s love to prioritize his wealth. Money, after all, neither brings happiness like love nor justifies cruelty.