Early Life and Owens College

George Robert Gissing, was born on 27 November 1857 at 55 Westgate, Wakefield, West Yorkshire. He was the eldest son of Thomas Waller Gissing (1829-1870), a pharmaceutical chemist, amateur botanist and writer, and his wife, Margaret Bedford (1832-1913).

He had four siblings: William (1859-1880), a music teacher who died of consumption, aged 20; Algernon (1860-1937), a rather prolific, though unsuccessful, regional novelist; and two spinster sisters, Margaret (1863-1930) and Ellen (1867-1938). His sisters, known as Madge and Nellie, remained in Wakefield for most of their lives, running a school there for a time.

As a child Gissing was widely read, benefiting greatly from the carefully selected volumes in the family library and showing a particular preference for the Greek and Roman classics and English Poets.  In his studies he was very much influenced and encouraged by his father, Thomas Waller Gissing.

Between 1863 and 1870, Gissing attended the Unitarian school at Back Lane, where he proved to be a precocious student.

This extract from Gissing's manuscript diary, written aged 12, betrays his appetite for literary and historical knowledge.

"10th. Saturday... Today I invented, and intend to construct, a little model of a locomotive engine, working by steam, and also a model of a Roman trireme, the oars moving by steam. I have read J. Eastmead's lecture upon Gladstone's book Juventus Mundi . I wish I could have heard the lecture delivered, but I happened to be at the School of Art that night... 12th. Monday. Went to school....Father has given us a very nice little book. It is called That's it, or Plain Teaching. It is profusely illustrated having upwards of 1,200 illustrations. It is a book by the author of The Reason Why which I have. I began to do Latin verses today for the first time."

Following his father's sudden death on 28 December 1870, Gissing was sent by his mother to Lindow Grove School at Alderley Edge, Cheshire, from where, having been placed first in the Manchester district at the Oxford Local Examinations, he won a scholarship to Owens College, Manchester.

Gissing entered Owens College in 1872. At that time the college prepared candidates from the north of England for entry into London, Oxford and Cambridge universities; it was to become The Victoria University of Manchester in 1903.

During his time at Owens, Gissing excelled as a student, and won many prizes. On one occasion, he required the hire of a cab in which to ferry all his prizes home, a story he later retold through Godwin Peak, a character in his novel Born in Exile (1892).

In 1874, Gissing matriculated with high honours in the University of London, and in 1875 won both first place (in all of England) in the first class  with the University Exhibition in Latin and English and also the Owens Shakespeare scholarship.

Gissing's academic career was not to last. In 1875-1876 he met Marianne Helen Harrison (1858-1888), a seventeen year old prostitute, whom he wished to redeem and later was to marry on 27 October 1879. In the spring of 1876, in order to support her, now that his scholarship money was running out,  he started committing petty thefts in the cloakroom of the college, was caught red-handed  and by June 1876 had been convicted, sentenced to one month's hard labour and expelled from the college.

Following his expulsion from Owens College, Gissing travelled to America where he worked for a short time as a teacher at Waltham High School, Massachusetts. He also travelled to Chicago and New York, where he made his living writing short stories for newspapers. Late in 1877, he returned to England and took up residence in London with Marianne Helen Harrison (1858-1888), a seventeen year old prostitute. The couple were later to marry on 27 October 1879. At this time he took in private pupils and began working as a novelist.

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Source: The University of Manchester

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