ABSTRACT
In the vocabulary of criticism the word 'realism' has been soiled with all ignoble use, and one would hate to apply it unconditionally to the work ofa writer whom one admired. George Gissing, whose death is a loss to English literature none the less actual because he never won a wide circle ofreaders, would no doubt be called a realist by those who fancy that when once they have attached a label to a man there is nothing more to be said about him; but such a characterization cannot be accepted if it is meant to put him in the same category with Emile Zola, Flaubert, Mr George Moore, and Mr Howells, who are all realists in their different ways. With them it is the fact, and the fact only, which seems to count. But it is the fact transfigured by the imagination that one seeks in a work ofart; and the finest realism is not found in the record, but in the interpretation of the record. Gissing was a realist controlled by an ideal. He might seem to insist upon the sordid side oflife, but he had a passionate love ofbeauty. Consequently, in his analysis of the ugly there was always an implied contrast with the beautiful. This idealizing tendency grew upon him as he wrote. The Crown ofLife, one ofhis last books, is far richer in spiritual nourishment than The Unclassed, one of his first.
