Early
Life
Born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, to
lower-middle class parents, Gissing went on to win a scholarship to Owens College, the present
day University of
Manchester. A brilliant student, he excelled at
university, winning many coveted prizes, including the Shakespeare prize in
1875. When it looked as if he would go on to gain even more distinguished
honours as a student and as an academic, he fell in love with a prostitute,
Marianne Helen Harrison. As he lacked the means to support her himself, Gissing
began to steal from his fellow students. At length, he was caught, convicted of
theft, and forced to leave the
university; he was sentenced to one month's hard labour in prison. In October
1876, thanks largely to a few local sympathisers, he
was shipped off to the United States,
where, when close to starvation, he managed to earn a precarious living by
writing short stories for the Chicago Tribune.
Gissing is the brother of another noted late-Victorian novelist, Algernon
Gissing.
Early
Life Literary career Later
years
Source: Wikipedia