ABSTRACT
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft is one of the most melancholy books that even Mr Gissing has written. Only this is intensely interesting, a fact inclining one to forgive much. Why it should be sorrowful we are at a loss to understand. The chapters ofwhich the book consists are represented as containing the reflections of a man of letters who for thirty years has lived by his pen, doing the work of a hack. 'He was a struggling man, beset by poverty and other circumstances very unpropitious to mental work.' But better times came.
