ABSTRACT
Whether Mr Gissing does or does not ultimately attain a high place in imaginative literature, there is no doubt that Workers in the Dawn is a very powerful work. So powerful are its best parts, that they amply make amends for the ludicrous ignorance and deep-seated prejudice displayed in the delineation of character and description of life, where character and life are unknown by personal experience to the author.
Unfortunately, it is the world of poverty and misery, and the dark side ofhuman nature, with which Mr Gissing is best acquainted. Vice, with the dire effect it produces on human beings, both physically and morally, when generation after generation lives and dies without a hope, or even wish for anything better, is drawn with terrible reality.
