ABSTRACT
The fifteen brief sketches that make up this posthumous work by George Gissing have a very uniform quality which readers unused to the finer literary discriminations will perhaps find monotonous. In fact the effect of the book is cumulative, and one must have read far before he realizes how remarkable a survey it is of the narrow world in which Gissing lived most of his life-the grey limbo of shabby gentility, with its meticulous scruples maintained in the face of penury, its obscure tragedies and comedies, its furtive generosities, its lonely intransigencies. And Gissing has invested this chronicle of those who fail with a curious dignity. His heroes may have failed, but at least they have not consciously surrendered. Rebuffs are their daily bread, which they eat with patient stoicism. They one and all retain the respect due to those who, perforce, live alone or in alien companionship, yet indulge no bitterness toward the prosperous world. Indeed, this group of reduced gentlemen, impoverished bibliophiles, penniless authors, and the like stands in tacit, but damning contrast with the children of worldly success who occasionally intervene-the money lenders, the prosperous friends who lightly promise but as quickly forget, the whole lucky rabble that has no time to indulge delicate feelings.
