ABSTRACT
No one who read Isabel Clarendon will hesitate to pronounce it the work of a man who is something more than a clever writer. Mr Gissing brings a fresh and original mind into the field of fiction. He does not follow the beaten track. His plot, ifit may be called a plot, is not of any of the fashionable patterns. Weare not sure that, as a mere story, Isabel Clarendon gains by this. Those who read novels for the story only may, in fact, be warned off the ground. Events do not take the course that the habitual novel reader would predict or desire, and the narrative simply stops like that ofan epic, and is not nicely rounded offand finished according to the recognised and on the whole excellent practice of novel-writers. The reader wishes that characters and events had turned out differently, and when he gets to the end there are several
