ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the experience of socialism as it reveals itself in the work of George Gissing, a nineteenth century novelist. The development from faith to disbelief in positivism is a central factor in Gissing's early work. Workers in the Dawn was written in a positivist spirit and it gained Gissing the valuable friendship of Frederick Harrison. Gissing's early flirtation with socialism rapidly came into conflict with what he held to be valuable in society as it existed. Late in 1885 he started Demos: A Story of English Socialism, a novel which records this change of perspective. It is important to insist on the closeness of Gissing and Morris in their analyses of industrialism, because it shows how far Gissing had moved from the simple toryism of Demos and Isabel Clarendon. In The Nether World, industrial capitalism is seen as the enemy of working people, but it is presented not as a personality but as an abstract, controlling principle.
