New Grub St — George R. Gissing

George Gissing's best-known novel shows us the literary underbelly of Victorian England, and the writers striving to forge their reputations in "the street of no shame"

Grub Street -- where would-be writers aim high, publishers plumb the depths, and literature is a trade, never a calling. In a literary world disfigured by greed and exploitation, two very different writers rise and fall: Edward Reardon, a novelist whose high standards prevent him from pandering to the common taste, and Jasper Milvain, who possesses no such scruples. Gissing's dark and darkly funny novel presents a little-seen but richly absorbing slice of 19th-century society.