ABSTRACT
Gissing's New Grub Street (1891) provides a graphic demonstration of what it means to fail as a man. The novel is about literary life in late-Victorian England, but it filters this topic through multiple images of men defining themselves against other men. The novel shows an intense awareness of what it means to succeed as a man, both in terms of work and career as well as in terms of love and marriage. Gissing's study of modem literary producation is conveyed through violence and competition amongst men, where a lack of personal depth is a major pre-requisite for material success. The novel criticises established meanings of masculine success by celebrating the man who fails and also by locating refinement and integrity in the failed man's wasting body and crumbling career.
