ABSTRACT
The fifteen short stories included in this volume constitute the final posthumous contribution to literature of one of the greatest and, within his strictly defmed limits, most perfect of English stylists. Mr Seccombe's well-written and sympathetic prefatory monograph makes no mention of the previous appearance of these stories, one at least of which we remember having read before. The subject matter of most of them relates to personal experiences far back in the author's career, and, in common with all save one or two ofhis other works, they bear the searing impress of those unhappy early struggles which darkened his whole outlook upon life, and whose deferred consequences cheated him out of that crepuscular calm of lettered ease, so pathetically anticipated in the choice pages of his semi-autobiographical masterpiece. The reading-world is already sufficiently acquainted with the peculiar defects, though it is slow to recognise the very rare and special excellences of Gissing as a story-writer. Both of these are present to a very characteristic extent in the volume before us, which we may sum up by saying that there is not a page which is not pure Gissing, and not a story but would have been utterly spoiled by another hand. The more than Maupassant-like disdain of mere plot of the conventional 'story' is here unfettered by the prudential considerations which account for the happy endings ofone or two of the longer novels; the occasional touches ofromance are only the spasmodic revolts ofa sensitive nature against the dingy horrors of scenes which he had trained * Arthur Henry Bullen, the Elizabethan scholar and partner ofLawrence & Bullen, published eight books by Gissing in the 18905.
