By 1883, Gissing was no longer
associated with his first wife, Marianne Harrison; she eventually died in a
London slum in 1888. In 1891, he married Edith Alice Underwood (1867-1917). She
was the daughter of a respectable artisan whom he met at the Oxford Music Hall
in London. This second marriage was no more a success than the first, but
produced two sons, Walter (1891-1916) and Alfred (1896-1975).
In 1897 Gissing and Edith separated. From then on Gissing
saw little of his elder son, communicating with him mainly by letter, and saw
his younger son only once, in 1898, when he was about 2 and a half years old.
By 1902, Edith had been confined to an asylum. Walter
Gissing trained as an architect but was killed in the battle of the Somme on 1
July, 1916. Alfred went on to write and edit several articles and books
about his father.
In a letter to his eldest son, Walter,
aged six, Gissing writes of his impending visit to Italy, "I shall see the
Alps on my journey, as I go right through Switzerland. One night I shall stop
at Rheims in France, and the next, most likely, at Como. Aunt Katie will
show you my journey on the map, if you ask her nicely. Of course I shall write
to you from Italy, and I hope to bring you back some beautiful things."
Despite his difficult
domestic circumstances, the early 1890's were artistically productive for
Gissing. He published The Emancipated in 1890, a satirical study in moral and
spiritual emancipation set in Naples and Yorkshire, and, in 1891 New Grub
Street, his strongest book and an acknowledged classic on the commercialisation
of literature and the rise of mass education.
Published in 1892, his next novel Born in Exile, dealt
with the contemporaneous issue of the collision of religious belief with
scientific revelation and its effects on the novel's main character. There are
many autobiographical elements in this book and Gissing draws heavily on his
experiences and the moral conflicts surrounding his expulsion from Owens
College.
In 1891 Gissing had sent the manuscript of Born in Exile
to James Payn (1830-1898), reader for the publishing company Smith Elder. Payn
had told Gissing that his books would not sell unless they became less
pessimistic.
Here Gissing writes in response:
"Thank you; in writing thus privately to me about the prospects of the MS.
you have done me a kindness. I cannot expect my publishers to have as much
faith in the future of my books as I have myself...To alter with deliberation
the whole spirit of my work would be to court & merit failure. I take no
credit to myself for preferring present poverty to the certainty of a hopeless
future if I tried to write otherwise... I am sure you will think me justified
in going about to find what this MS. will fetch in the open market."
Both his next two novels, Denzil
Quarrier (1892) and The Odd Women (1893), deal with the education and
emancipation of women. It was in 1893 that he met Clara Collet (1860-1948), an
educated women and one of the first to have a distinguished career in
government. She became his confidante and remained a loyal friend until his
death in 1903.
His other novels from this period include In the Year of
Jubilee (1894), Eve's Ransom (1895), Sleeping Fires (1895), The Paying
Guest (1895), The Whirlpool (1897) and The Town Traveller (1898), the
most Dickensian of his novels. During these years, inhibited by domestic
circumstances and a need to supplement his income, Gissing also spent much of
his time in the production of a series of short stories. These were published
collectively in Human Odds and Ends (1898) and several posthumous volumes.
Throughout his
life, Gissing was very often unsatisfied with the publishers of his novels and
often sought to move and change the terms on which he was to receive payment.
This novel was one of his best attempts at comedy, although he found it
difficult to write.
According to this agreement, Gissing is to
receive ten percent of sales. the agreement is signed by George Gissing and
witnessed by his brother, Algernon Gissing.
Source: The University of Manchester