ABSTRACT
This is a no less remarkable book than Demos, and though there are fewer stirring incidents, the characters are truer to life and inspire more sympathy. The interest of the story is concentrated in Lambeth, where Thyrza lives, a lonely factory girl whose 'cabin'd ample spirit' yearns for a fuller life. There are touches of great pathos and beauty in the description of her love for the young idealist, who, in his attempt to raise the working man by the gift of a library, becomes the cause of sorrow and uprooting. The lives and surroundings ofthe hard-working poor are described with rare insight and vividness, and therein lies Mr Gissing's especial power. It is a grey world that he draws; but if his tone is somewhat morbid, it is redeemed by the earnestness and force with which he writes.
