ABSTRACT
It was in 1890 that Gissing brought out that extraordinary book The Nether World. This man would seem to have been in hell. Other men crawl to the edges of the pit and look over at the poor devils that writhe in its flames-he has come up out of it, and now, like the man of the parable, would testify to his brethren lest they too enter that place of torment! As no one else has ever done-I would almost venture to prophesy as no one else will ever do-Gissing writes the tragedy ofWant. It is not written with brutality, and that is why it is so terrible and undeniable. This bald incisiveness beggars the vulgar exaggeration of other writers who by overstating their case deprive it of effect. As we know that every word is true-this is hunger, and heaven help the hungry!-this despair indeed-not the glib despair which the novelists deal in by the page, but that mortal disease of the mind which is past all cure. Gissing has no gospel of hope to offer his readers. 'Work as you will,' he says, 'there is no chance of a new and better world until the old be utterly destroyed.' The 'lower orders' are, to his seeing, one huge tragedy: 'A Great Review of the People. Since man came into being
did the world ever exhibit asadder spectacle?' he enquires. There is no more awful fate by his showing than life in the East End. He writes of travelling 'across miles ofa city of the damned, such as thought never conceived before this age ofours; stopping at stations which it crushes the heart to think should be the destination ofany mortal,' and in this key of almost insane depression The Nether World continues from its frrst page to its last-a terrible book, but one that is deserving of more fame than it ever got.
