New Grub Street by George Gissing Fiction

<p><strong>The story's two central characters are a sharply contrasted pair of writers:</strong> Edwin Reardon a novelist of some talent but limited commercial prospects and a shy cerebral man and Jasper Milvain a young journalist hard-working and capable of generosity but cynical and only semi-scrupulous about writing and its purpose in the modern (i.e. late Victorian) world.</p><p>The most impressive of Gissing's books . . . England has produced very few better novelists. -- George Orwell</p>