ABSTRACT
Despite its cool reception by professional critics in 1884, The Unclassed had made a deep impression on the minds of some reviewers and readers. In the next ten years th~ book was occasionally referred to in literary journals. Thomas Hardy was known to hold it in high esteem. After serious hesitation, Gissing yielded in September 1895 to his publisher's request to reprint it in a revised form. From the 8th to the 13th of that month, he went through his novel and cut it by one-third. For a comparison of the two versions, seeJosephJ. Wolff: 'Gissing's Revision of The Unclassed', Nineteenth-Century Fiction, June 1953, 42-51. This preface to the new edition was written at the suggestion ofEduard Bertz.
