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George Gissing: A Life

The downfall of a pessimist

Paul Delaney
Weidenfeld, 472pp, £25,

Ferdinand Mount

Wednesday, 5th March 2008

Ferdinand Mount reviews Paul Delany's biography of George Gessing

We see Gissing at his most unpleasant when he refuses to allow Edith to answer letters from a middle-class friend, claiming that ‘she has long since given up hope of learning to write, so I will answer for her’ — when in fact perfectly coherent letters from Edith survive to this day. He was almost as horrible to their two sons. Walter, the elder, was ‘deplorably ugly’, as well as being ‘ill-tempered, untruthful, precociously insolent, surprisingly selfish’. He never saw the boys or Edith for the last five years of his life, which he spent at Pau with Gabrielle Fleury, a French literary groupie who acted as his third wife, though Edith was still alive. They settled in the Pyrenees in the mistaken belief that the climate was good for his lungs. In fact what he was dying of was syphilis, probably contracted from Nell all those years ago in Water Street. In the Pyrenees he yearned for the lanes round Guildford.

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jeffrey manley

March 6th, 2008 6:48pm

When mentioning prominent South London authors, I'm surprised Mr. Mount does not name Henry Williamson. The fisrt volumes of his Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight describe his early life in and around Lewisham. And Mr. Mount is surely familiar with his work since he calls his own series of novels Chronicle of Modern Twilight. These latter by the way should have received more attention than they have.

Markus Neacey

March 11th, 2008 10:13pm

Gissing was not the self-defeating, self-pitying, or hopelessly pessimistic individual so many generally misinformed reviewers imagine him to be. Had he been so he would have hanged himself in his prison cell. Yet, having sacrificed his career and reputation to save a common prostitute, he did not wallow in despair. Instead, by sheer determination and imcomparable industriousness, not to mention courage, he resurrected his life and made of it beauty from ashes. For, during twenty-five years of literary activity, he produced a body of work, whose power and humanity resounds to this day. As Orwell in his day and his many admirers today recognise, that is hardly the legacy of a defeated pessimist.