The essay below by John Halperin first appeared under the title "Some notes on the Gissing revival" as an
appendix to his book Gissing: A Life in Books (OUP, 1982). I am most grateful for the permission of
Prof. Halperin, Centennial Professor of English at Vanderbilt University, to republish it here. I have
attempted a continuation, c1980 to the present, which is far from complete.
 

Serious interest in Gissing revived around 1961. I shall take that year as my starting-point in this brief
survey of what the Gissing revival has produced.

First, new editions of Gissing's work. Several paperback editions of Gissing's novels appeared in 1961 -
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, edited by V. S. Pritchett (New York: New American Library,
Signet paperback); the same novel was brought out unedited in this year by Doubleday (New York:
Anchor Dolphin paperback); and Doubleday also published a new edition of New Grub Street in the same
format. In 1962 came a paperback edition of New Grub Street, edited by Irving Howe (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin; Riverside paperback). By the Ionian Sea was re-published in 1963 with a Foreword by Frank
Swinnerton (London: Richards Press). Les Carnets dHenry Ryecroft (The Private Papers of Henry
Ryecroft), edited by Pierre Coustillas - a bilingual edition - was published in 1966 (Paris: Aubier
Montaigne). In the next year another edition of New Grub Street appeared, this one edited in cloth by
John Gross (London: The Bodley Head, 1967). In 1968 came still another edition of New Grub Street,
edited by Bernard Bergonzi (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin; Magnolia, Mass.: Peter Smith; Penguin
paperback reprinted in 1976 and 1978). In the same year (1968) appeared a new edition of The Odd
Women, edited by Swinnerton (London: Anthony Blond; New York: Stein and Day), and three essays by
Gissing were reprinted together under the title Notes on Social Democracy, edited by Jacob Korg
(London: Enitharmon Press). In 1969 the Harvester Press (then in Hassocks, Sussex; now in Brighton)
initiated its critical edition of Gissing's works by bringing out a two-volume edition of Isabel Clarendon,
edited by Coustillas. Gissing's Writings on Dickens: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey, edited by Coustillas
(Enitharmon), also appeared in 1969. Two essays not previously identified as being by Gissing were
reprinted here, both from the TLS - 'Mr. Swinburne on Dickens' (25 July 1902) and 'Mr. Kitton's Life of
Dickens' (1 5 August 1902) -- and the editor added a helpful essay of his own which recapitulates the
extent of Gissing's interest in and work on his great predecessor. Three more Gissing volumes appeared in
1970. Two of Gissing's previously unpublished tales were brought out as 'My First Rehearsal' and 'My
Clerical Rival', edited by Coustillas (Enitharmon). Coustillas also edited a collection of manuscripts
published for the first time as George Gissing: Essays and Fiction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press),
which includes two essays (the important 'Hope of Pessimism', and 'Along Shore'), a novella ('All for
Love'), and six short stories written between 1879 and 1884 ('The Last Half-Crown', 'Cain and Abel',
'The Quarry on the Heath', 'The Lady of the Dedication', 'Mutimer's Choice', and 'Their Pretty Ways').
The editor's long introduction to this volume is especially helpful. Also in 1970 Born in Exile, edited by
Walter Allen, was republished in cloth (London: Gollancz). The Odd Women (New York: Norton; Norton
paperback) was published in 1971; having become a minor document of the women's movement of the
seventies, it has been reprinted several times since. The lesser-known A Victim of Circumstances (New
York: Books for Libraries Press), a collection of late stories, also reappeared in 1971. Harvester published
Demos, edited by Coustillas, in 1972. The Nether World, edited by Walter Allen (London: J. M. Dent;
New York: E. P. Dutton; Everyman's Library paperback) was published in 1973 (and reprinted in 1975).
In 1974 came another edition of The Nether World, this one edited by John Goode (Harvester, and
Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press); Thyrza, edited by Jacob Korg (Harvester and
Fairleigh Dickinson); Sleeping Fires, edited by Coustillas (Harvester); and Coustillas's edition of Demos
in paperback (Harvester). In 1976 Harvester and Fairleigh Dickinson brought out The Unclassed, edited
by Korg; In the Year of Jubilee, edited by P. F. Kropholler, with an Introduction by Gillian Tindall; and
Our Friend the Charlatan, edited by Coustillas. Also in 1976 Workers in the Dawn was republished by
Garland (New York and London; three volumes in one). The Emancipated, edited by Coustillas, and The
Whirlpool, edited by Patrick Parrinder, were published by Harvester and Fairleigh Dickinson in 1977. In
1978 the same two brought out Born in Exile, edited by Coustillas, in both cloth and paper. In this year.
too George Gissing on Fiction, edited by Jacob and Cynthia Korg, was published by Enitharmon; this
volume reproduces sections of Gissing's letters (many of them to Algernon) which deal with the writing of
novels, and two essays - 'The Coming of the Preacher' and 'The English Novel of the Eighteenth
Century'. In 1979 Harvester and the Humanities Press brought out new editions of The Crown of Life,
edited by Michel Ballard, and Denzil Quarrier, edited by John Halperin.

The sum total: 32 editions in 18 years (including seven in paperback), 27 of which appeared between
1968 and 1979. With the exception of Hardy, no other Victorian novelist has been reprinted so
prodigiously since 1968. (1 do not include in these figures novels by Gissing which apparently also exist in
unreliable reprint-facsimile editions published by Abrahams' Magazine Services [New York], 1968-71. I
have not reviewed these, but they are said to include Workers in the Dawn, The Unclassed, Demos,
Thyrza, A Life's Morning, The Emancipated, Denzil Quarrier, Born in Exile, The Odd Women, In the
Year of Jubilee, Eve's Ransom, The Paying Guest, The Whirlpool, The Town Traveller, The Crown of
Life, Our Friend the Charlatan, Veranilda, and Will Warburton - eighteen in all.)

Next, editions of Gissing's letters and private papers. In 1961 two collections of the novelist's letters were
published - the first such volumes to appear since the Letters of George Gissing to Members of His
Family, edited by Algernon and Ellen Gissing (London: Constable) came out in 1927. These were The
Letters of George Gissing to Eduard Bertz, 1887-1903, edited by Arthur C. Young (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press; London: Constable), and George Gissing and H. G. Wells: Their
Friendship and Correspondence, edited by Royal A. Gettmann (Urbana: University of Illinois Press). The
Letters of George Gissing to Gabrielle Fleury, edited by Pierre Coustillas (New York: New York Public
Library), was published in 1964. These, plus the volume of family letters, remain the major collections in
print. Other smaller collections of letters published recently include Henry Hick's Recollections of George
Gissing, Together with Gissing's Letters to Henry Hick and The Letters of George Gissing, to Edward
Clodd, both edited by Coustillas and brought out by Enitharmon in 1973. Another important volume
containing personal writings of the novelist is George Gissing's Commonplace Book, edited by Jacob
Korg (New York: New York Public Library, 1962). Gissing's diary, covering the years 1887 to 1902, has
been published under the unwieldy title London and the Life of Literature in Late Victorian England:
The Diary of George Gissing, Novelist, edited by Coustillas (Harvester; and Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell
University Press, 1978).

Finally, bibliographical, biographical, and critical volumes on Gissing published since 1961 (I omit articles,
and previously published book-length studies). After Morley Roberts's untrustworthy The Private Life of
Henry Maitland ( 1912), Wells's acidulous and highly inaccurate 'reminiscences' in Experiment in
Autobiography (1934), S. V. Gapp's brilliant George Gissing, Classicist (1936), Mabel Collins
Donnelly's unsatisfactory critical biography George Gissing: Grave Comedian (1954), A. C. Ward's
unsympathetic Gissing (1959). and Orwell's incisive and influential essay 'George Gissing' (written in
1948 but not published until 1960), the most important study to appear was Jacob Korg's splendid George
Gissing: A Critical Biography (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963; London: Methuen, 1965).
This book gave impetus to Gissing studies nearly two decades ago, superseding previous biocriticism and
opening Gissing studies to others who had the desire to work on Gissing but not the tools. Indeed, few if
any sustained discussions of the novelist and his work published after Korg's book have been as
informative or incisive. In 1965 Korg helped found, and became the first editor of, The Gissing
Newsletter - in its seventeenth year now, edited by Pierre Coustillas, and published in Dorking, Surrey, by
C. C. Kohler (12, Horsham Road). Oswald H. Davis, in George Gissing: A Study in Literary Leanings
(London: Johnson Publications, 1966; reprinted in 1974 by Kohler and Coombes, with a Foreword by
Coustillas), pays little attention either to chronology or any standards of critical objectivity in his survey of
the novels and stories. Also in 1966 the third edition of Frank Swinnerton's George Gissing was issued
by the Kennikat Press (Port Washington, N.Y.) with a new Introduction by the author. The book is
unsympathetic to Gissing; its interest today, since its only noteworthiness is the damage it did to Gissing's
reputation in 1912, is historical. In 1968 Coustillas edited Collected Articles on George Gissing (London:
Frank Cass: New York: Barnes and Noble), which reprints sixteen essays culled from various sources.
Also in 1968 appeared P. J. Keating's George Gissing: 'New Grub Street' (London: Edward Arnold),
which contributes little to our understanding of the novel. Next to come out was Coustillas's George
Gissing at Alderley Edge (London: Enitharmon, 1969), a brief but interesting account of the two years
(1871 to 1872) Gissing spent at the boarding school in Cheshire. In Gissing East and West: Four Aspects
(London: Enitharmon, 1970), Coustillas discusses problems and opportunities for the would-be Gissing
scholar in search of materials and information. The Rediscovery of George Gissing (London: National
Book League, 1971) is a pamphlet designed by Coustillas and John Spiers as a companion-guide to the
Gissing Exhibition of that year at the National Book League (Albemarle Street, London). The two authors
put together here an informative and original combination of bibliography and biography - this is perhaps
the best of the shorter studies of Gissing published recently. Also in 1971 appeared Coustillas's Gissing's
Writings on Dickens (Enitharmon). The Critical Heritage people got around to Gissing in 1972; Gissing:
The Critical Heritage, edited by Coustillas and Colin Partridge (London and Boston: Routledge and
Kegan Paul), is a comprehensive and useful compilation of contemporary reactions to Gissing's novels. In
1974 appeared George Gissing: An Annotated Bibliography of Writings about Him, edited and
annotated by Joseph J. Wolff (Dekalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press), which lists secondary
material published between 1880 and 1970 and summarizes briefly the content of each item listed. This
volume is efficiently organized and arranged, the annotations lucid and helpful; it is not complete,
however, and its index is useless. Also in 1974 came Gillian Tindall's The Born Exile: G eorge Gissing
(London: Temple Smith; New York: Barnes and Noble), which is long on fascinating psychoanalysis but
short on sensible literary criticism. Still, any student of Gissing will find this book illuminating and
provocative. Adrian Poole's Gissing in Context (London: Macmillan; Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and
Littlefield), which purports to discuss the intellectual and literary climate in which Gissing's books were
written but in fact fails to do so, appeared in 1975. In the same year Michael Collie's George Gissing: A
Bibliography was published (Toronto: University of Toronto Press). This volume, as well as two others
by Collie - George Gissing: A Biography (Folkestone: Dawson, 1977) and The Alien Art: A Critical
Study of George Gissing's Novels (Dawson; and Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1979) - must be read
with extreme caution; all have inaccuracies, and the 'biography' is especially capricious with the facts of
Gissing's life. John Goode's George Gissing: Ideology and Fiction (London: Vision Press, 1978; New
York: Barnes and Noble, 1979) is little more than an 'introduction' to Gissing, notable chiefly for its
impenetrable prose. In 1981 J. P. Michaux published George Gissing: Critical Essays (,London: Vision
Press; New York: Barnes and Noble), an excellent collection of twenty one reprinted pieces.

Again figures are relevant here. Between 1961 and 1978 there have appeared seven volumes of Gissing's
private writings and sixteen biocritical or bibliographical volumes. Fifteen of these latter have come out
since 1968. In the last twelve years alone, 44 Gissing-related volumes have been published -- 30 editions
and 13 secondary works -- which averages out to 3.7 per year. This is a genuine revival. Certainly less
has been published on Gissing in recent years than on Hardy or Trollope or the Brontes, and there is still
much less in print on Gissing than there is on Dickens or George Eliot. But just as certainly Gissing has
been keeping pace with such other acknowledged 'major' Victorian novelists as Thackeray, Mrs Gaskell,
and Meredith, and for whatever it is worth, he is leagues ahead of Disraeli, Collins, Butler, and George
Moore. It is a pace that suits him, and that may yet quicken even more.

                               NOTE

In the recently discovered preface to the Rochester Edition of David Copperfield, Gissing writes that that
novel was Dickens's own favourite among his books because it was his most autobiographical work - a
sentiment with which Gissing readily sympathizes. Of Copperfield, Gissing adds: 'The book is fortunate in
its autobiographical form, which burdens us as little as may be with exigencies of "plot". For the
contrivance of a plot Dickens had no aptitude . . . [He] lacked almost entirely the novelist's power of
inventing plausible circumstances.'

Dickens's essential conservatism is also noted in the preface. 'Dickens, with his intensely practical
commonsense . . . never desired a social revolution; he believed firmly in the subordination of ranks, and
shows throughout his writings that he regarded "humility" as a natural and laudable attribute of the lowly
class'. Clearly Gissing approves of what he calls 'the conservatism which lay deep in [Dickens's] mind';
the younger novelist characterizes it as 'the root of so much in him that was good and great'.
 
 

Continuation of the bibliographic essay, 1979-present (Peter Morton)
[Publications in English only]

New editions of Gissing's work continued to appear regularly throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but
publishers have been unwilling, generally speaking, to keep them in print for long. The Harvester Press of
Brighton was active in the 80s: an edition of The Town Traveller (ed. Coustillas) was produced in 1981;
Will Warburton edited by Colin Partridge appeared in 1981 also; The Nether World (ed. John Goode) and
Demos (ed. Coustillas) and The Paying Guest (ed. Ian Fletcher) in 1982;  Harvester also produced
Workers in the Dawn (ed. Coustillas) in 1985.

OUP/World's Classics did an edition of The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (ed. Mark Storey) in 1987,
and The Nether World (ed. Stephen Gill) in 1992. In 1993 Dent/Everyman published a new edition of
Born in Exile (ed. David Grylls) with an introduction, textual notes and a selection of criticism; also a
selection of short fiction under the title The Day of Silence and Other Stories (ed. P. Coustillas). The
latter's editorial matter consists of a biographical note, a chronology, some textual notes and some critical
comments. Also from Dent/Everyman there came The Whirlpool (ed. William Greenslade) in 1997, with
admirably comprehensive notes, and an edition of In the Year of Jubilee in 1994, with an introduction by
Paul Delany and highly informative textual notes by J.P. Henry, plus a section on reviews and a rather
curious 'text summary'. The Illinois publisher Marlboro Press produced a nice paperback of By the Ionian
Sea in 1996.

New Grub Street has been repeatedly republished in the 90s. The OUP/World's Classics version (ed. John
Goode) came out in 1993 (with excellent notes, including a map of the relevant part of London and a
commentary on the milieu)  Ryburn Publishing of Halifax, UK produced an attractive edition of New
Grub Street in 1992, edited by John Halperin. The faulty translation in the notes of some of Gissing's
Latin and Greek were criticised by Bouwe Postmus in the Gissing Journal for January 1993. Penguin's
edition of New Grub Street with the introduction and notes by Bernard Bergonzi was the standard one for
years; its format was enlarged in 1993 and  Penguin produced a new edition in 1995. The enterprising
publisher Wordsworth Editions produced its basic edition of New Grub Street in 1996, at a price so very
low that it instantly became the text of choice with impecunious students. A Dent/Everyman edition edited
by D.J. Taylor came out in 1997, with textual notes.

The Odd Women has deservedly benefited from the patronage of the Women's Studies market: it was
republished by Virago Press in 1980 with an introduction by Margaret Walters; this one had the same
pagination as the old Anthony Blond edition of 1968, but with some of the misprints corrected. There was
a New American Library edition in 1983, with a substantial introduction (marred by a few minor slips)
and a short bibliography by Elaine Showalter; this edition was reprinted as the Penguin edition in 1994,
but the errors were not corrected and the bibliography by this time was very out of date: this is still the
current Penguin in 1998. None of these editions had textual notes. Michael Meyer's successful dramatic
adaptation of the novel was published by Samuel French in ?1994. Broadview Press produced, with reset
print on good paper,  an attractive edition of The Odd Women in 1998 edited by Arlene Young. This is by
far the best edition to date. Young provided some useful and accurate annotations (though a little
over-explicit, some may think) and well-chosen extracts from critics and from contemporary historical
documents. The text, though it does aim to correct the first edition copy text, has unfortunately introduced
a few typographical errors of its own.

Beyond question the most important Gissing publication of the 90s was Paul Mattheisen, Arthur Young,
and Pierre Coustillas (eds.), The Collected Letters of George Gissing (Ohio University Press, 1990-96) in
nine volumes. This formidable production, whose almost omniscient editing won praise far beyond the
zone of Gissing studies, has rendered all the other collections of the letters (and, one might say,
biographies) obsolete, and will shape our understanding of Gissing afresh into the indefinite future. The
biographical essays prefacing each volume are truly masterly.

Gissing's minor literary remains are now almost all in print. Six Sonnets on Shakespearean Heroines was
privately published by booksellers E. and J Stevens in 1982. Pierre Coustillas and Patrick Bridgwater
continued with George Gissing at Work: A Study of His Notebook - "Extracts from My Reading" (ELT
Press, 1988). There was an edition of Aphorisms and Reflections (ed. P.F. Kropholler) published in
Edinburgh by Tragara Press in 1989. Pierre Coustillas edited an unpublished short story, A Freak of
Nature, Or Mr Brogden, City Clerk for Tragara Press in 1990. An Essay on Robert Burns: A Previously
Unpublished Manuscript was published by the Edward Mellen Press in 1992 edited by Jacob Korg; the
same press also published the American Notebook: Notes G.R.G. 1877 edited by Bouwe Postmus in
1993. Robert Selig edited Lost Stories from America. Five Signed Stories Never Before Reprinted for
the Edwin Mellen Press in 1992. The Poetry of George Gissing (ed. Postmus, Edwin Mellen Press)
appeared in 1995. The publication of George Gissing's Memorandum Book: A Novelist's Notebook,
1895-1902, edited by Bouwe Postmus (Edwin Mellen Press, 1996; and by the Institut fur Anglistik und
Amerikanistik, University of Salzburg, 1997) has virtually completed these remains.

The most important biographical-critical work is still John Halperin's Gissing: A Life in Books (OUP,
1982); there has been no other significant biography since then. Three minor biographical works of the
early 90s were Clifford Brook's George Gissing and Wakefield: A Novelist's Associations with His
Home (Gissing Trust, 1991); Patricia Hodson, George Gissing at Lindow Grove School, Alderley Edge,
Cheshire (Wilmslow History Society, 1993); and Gwyn Neale, All the Days Were Glorious: George
Gissing in North Wales (Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 1994). The latter booklet is the best kind of
topographical history and is particularly useful in relation to the Welsh scenes of The Whirlpool.

Finally, book-length critical studies (omitting articles, dissertations and books where Gissing does not
figure very largely) which have been published since the closing date of Prof. Halperin's essay. In 1989
came Gisela Argyle, German Elements in the Fiction of George Eliot, Gissing and Meredith (Peter
Lang). Pierre Coustillas published on Gissing and Turgenev (Enitharmon Press, 1981) and Patrick
Bridgwater on Gissing and Germany (Enitharmon Press, 1982). Gissing features in Frederic Jameson's
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Cornell UP, 1981). Robert Selig did
Gissing for the Twayne critical series in 1983, and revised his book in 1995. Rachel Bowlby's Just
Looking : Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing and Zola (Routledge) appeared in 1985 and David
Grylls' The Paradox of Gissing (London: Allen and Unwin) and Patricia Alden's Social Mobility in the
English Bildungsroman : Gissing, Hardy, Bennett (Edward Mellen Press), both in 1986. Michael Collie's
George Gissing: A Bibliographical Study (St Paul's Bibliographies, No 12) (St Paul's Bibliographies
Publications, 1986) is his 1975 bibliography brought up to date. John Sloan's George Gissing: The
Cultural Challenge (London: St Martins Press) in 1989.   First off the rank in the 1990s was Annette
Federico, Masculine Identity in Hardy and Gissing (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1991). In 1993 an issue
(No.10) of the journal Merope, published by the University of Chieti-Pescara, Italy was entirely devoted
to Gissing. It contained eight articles and two reviews. Christina Sjoholm, 'The Vice of Wedlock': The
Theme of Marriage in George Gissing's Novels (Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1994) is a thoroughly
well-informed, closely-argued thesis which makes a strong attack, with respect to the narratives' treatment
of marriage, on critics' tendencies to foolishly simple-minded  biographism -- something which it is hard to
resist, in fact probably unavoidable, with Gissing. Sjoholm is particularly good on the vexed question of
Gissing's (the man's) misogyny, compared to what "Gissing" (the texts) tell us.
A new edition of the Gissing volume in the Routledge "Critical Heritage" series (ed. Coustillas and
Partridge) appeared in 1995.
John Hughes, Lines of Flight: Reading Deleuze with Hardy, Gissing, Conrad, Woolf  was published by
the Sheffield Academic Press in 1997. Mark Connelly, Orwell and Gissing (NY: Peter Lang Publishing,
1997) serves the useful purpose of bringing together George Orwell's extensive remarks on Gissing, and
of tracing Gissing's influence on Orwell's early fiction. Some of the comparisons (eg the chapter on
Demos and Animal Farm) are forced, however; and the book is marred by a simplistic approach and an
extraordinary number of misprints and misquotations. (A lengthy review by Jacob Korg appeared in the
Gissing Journal, 34:2 (April 1998)).
 

URL: http://www.flinders.edu.au/topics/Morton/Gissing/GissingStudies.htm