George Gissing: 139 books

Richard Mutimer is a young lower-class working-man who unexpectedly inherits a large fortune. He becomes the leader of a socialist movement and decides to use his inheritance to set up a cooperative factory. However, his new wealth and power serve to highlight the defects of his character and he begins...

In a suburb of the city was a man, who was chemist by examination. He was 38 years old and he was unmarried. For some years, he had pondered matrimony, though without fixing his affections on any particular person. It was plain, indeed, that he ought to marry. Every tradesman is made more respectable...

The author narrated a story of one young woman. She was about 28 years old, she finished studying in the university, she was clever, she knew a great number of important people, she had a quiet decision of speech and manner which was found very impressive in Wattleborough drawing-rooms. Every dweller...

It was twenty years ago, and on an evening in May. At sunset, I leaved the house. I preferred to go for a walk, the weather was warm and there was an unwonted sweetness in the air. I saw an old bookshop and visited it. In the shop, I chose a book and went to a stall. I had been vaguely aware of someone...

As he waited for his breakfast, never served to time, Mr. Lashmar drummed upon the window-pane, and seemed to watch a blackbird lunching with much gusto about the moist lawn of Alverholme Vicarage. But his gaze was absent and worried. The countenance of the reverend gentleman rarely wore any other expression,...

From Salcot East to Winstoke there are two roads, known respectively as the old and the new. The latter was made about the middle of the present century; the old road is immemorial. By the modern highway the distance between the two parishes is rather less than five miles; pursue the other, and you...

1887 – the fiftieth anniversary of Queen Victoria’s reign – is a year of celebration. For this story’s heroine, Nancy Lord, it is also an opportunity to experience adult society. Her unchaperoned journey through the streets of London marks the beginning of her revolt, setting in motion the wheels...

Young, insecure, and smart, Godwin Peake is an atheist. At odds with his poor, religious  family, whose conservatism disgusts him, he longs to be part of the wealthy class. But once the door to moneyed society opens to Godwin, he begins to lie in order to fit in—losing himself in the process, in this 1892 novel.

A historical romance of Italy in the time of Theodoric the Goth.

Thyrza Trent, a young hat-trimmer, meets and falls in love with Walter Egremont, an Oxford-trained idealist who gives lectures on literature to workers. Trapped by birth and circumstance, Thyrza is attempting to escape her destiny in this tale of ambition, romance, betrayal and disillusionment.

Tomorrow I shall leave by the Messina boat, which calls at Paola. It is now more than a twelvemonth since I began to think of Paola, and an image of the place has grown in my mind. I picture a little marina; a yellowish little town just above; and behind, rising grandly, the long range of mountains which...

At eight o’clock on Sunday morning, Arthur Peachey unlocked his front door, and quietly went forth. He had not ventured to ask that early breakfast should be prepared for him. Enough that he was leaving home for a summer holiday—the first he had allowed himself since his marriage three years ago....

A young wealthy gentleman looses everything in speculation and is forced into a humble life of a grocer. He finds his circumstances tragic at first and keeps his fate secret from all his friends and family. He re-considers his attitudes only when the woman with whom he is falling in love discovers he is a grocer, and throws him over.