38 Facts About George Gissing

George Robert Gissing was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903.

George Gissing's siblings were: William, who died aged twenty; Algernon, who became a writer; Margaret; and Ellen.

George Gissing was educated at Back Lane School in Wakefield, where he was a diligent and enthusiastic student.

George Gissing's father died when he was 12 years old, and he and his brothers were sent to Lindow Grove School at Alderley Edge in Cheshire, where he was a solitary student who studied hard.

In 1872, after an exceptional performance in the Oxford Local Examinations, George Gissing won a scholarship to Owens College, forerunner of the Victoria University of Manchester, subsequently merged with University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology to form the University of Manchester.

The college hired a detective to investigate the thefts, and George Gissing was prosecuted, found guilty, expelled, and sentenced to a month's hard labour in Belle Vue Gaol, Manchester, in 1876.

George Gissing lived in poverty until he met a travelling salesman in need of an assistant, and Gissing demonstrated his products.

In September 1877, George Gissing left America and returned to England.

George Gissing failed to get his first novel Workers in the Dawn accepted by a publisher and published it privately, funding it with money from an inheritance.

George Gissing was friends with Eduard Bertz, a German socialist with whom he became acquainted in 1879.

George Gissing spent much time reading classical authors at the British Museum Reading Room, as well as coaching students for examinations.

George Gissing took long walks through the streets of London observing the poor.

George Gissing was guilty of extravagance and poor management of his finances.

George Gissing continued to pay a small alimony until her death in 1888.

Between his return to England and publication of The Unclassed, George Gissing wrote 11 short stories, but only "Phoebe" appeared at the time, in the March 1884 issue of Temple Bar.

On 25 February 1891, George Gissing married another working-class woman, Edith Alice Underwood.

Edith did not understand his work and George Gissing insisted on keeping them socially isolated from his peers, which exacerbated the problems.

George Gissing took revenge in April 1896, when Walter was spirited away without Edith's knowledge and sent to stay with George Gissing's sisters in Wakefield.

George Gissing pleaded Edith's violence, but he strongly disliked the way she presented him to his son.

The couple separated in 1897, though this was no clean break - George Gissing spent time dodging Edith and afraid she might seek a reconciliation.

From 1893, George Gissing wrote short stories, some of which were collected in an 1898 volume, Human Odds and Ends, and others in volumes published after his death.

In 1897 Gissing met H G Wells and his wife, who spent the spring with him and his sister at Budleigh Salterton.

In July 1898, George Gissing met Gabrielle Marie Edith Fleury, a Frenchwoman who approached him for permission to translate New Grub Street.

Ten months later, they became partners in a common-law marriage, as George Gissing did not divorce Edith.

George Gissing wrote several novels during his third marriage, including Among the Prophets, which remained unpublished and has not survived, Our Friend the Charlatan and Will Warburton.

George Gissing worked on his historical novel Veranilda, but it was unfinished when he died.

Apart from fiction, George Gissing followed up his study of Dickens with further writings, including introductions to editions of Dickens's works, articles for journals and a revised edition of John Forster's Dickens biography.

George Gissing died aged 46 on 28 December 1903 having caught a chill on an ill-advised winter walk.

George Gissing is buried in the English cemetery at Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

George Gissing had once, as he owned, been touched by Socialism, probably of a purely academic kind; and yet, when he was afterwards withdrawn from such stimuli as had influenced him to think for once in terms of sociology, he went back to his more natural despairing conservative frame of mind.

George Gissing lived in the past, and was conscious every day that something in the past that he loved was dying and must vanish.

George Gissing was not even able to believe that the gross and partial education of the populace was better than no education at all, in that it must some day inevitably lead to better education and a finer type of society.

The traditional view of critics is that Emile Zola was a primary influence on Gissing, but Jacob Korg suggests that George Eliot was a greater influence.

The Gissing Journal, a quarterly single-author journal devoted to the life and works of George Gissing, publishes essays, book reviews.

George Gissing was followed from January 1969 to April 2013 by Pierre Coustillas, emeritus professor of English at the University of Lille, and from July 2013 by Malcolm Allen of the University of Wisconsin.

Markus Neacey, a regular contributor and independent George Gissing scholar, restarted The George Gissing Journal as editor in January 2017.

George Gissing had in 2016 written a history and index of The Gissing Journal.

The George Gissing Journal is indexed by the Modern Language Association, reviewed annually by The Year's Work in English Studies and regularly mentioned in the Times Literary Supplement.