Concetti Chiave
- New Grub Street, a novel by George Gissing, explores the challenging and ironic lives of writers in the late 19th century.
- The title references Grub Street, a term coined by Alexander Pope to describe the difficult literary world of underpaid writers.
- Gissing illustrates the literary crisis of the era, marked by new communication forms and popular journalism impacting intellectual works.
- The novel highlights the commercialization of writing, where many authors wrote for profit rather than passion, typical of the Victorian era.
- Despite the era's constraints, some characters in the novel strive to write authentically, reflecting Gissing's modern approach.
New Grub Street is a novel written by George Gissing in 1891. The title of the novel refers to the complicated vicissitudes and love, but also ironic, involving the protagonists.
In fact, Grub Street is the street name invented by Alexander Pope in his satire of the literary world and which has since described the environment in which unfolded the dark and thankless job of an army of scribblers forced to make ends meet.
Il contesto storico e culturale
Through an ironic, Gissing portrays a diverse and heterogeneous group of novelists, journalists and scholars during the Cultural and literary crisis in the late nineteenth century, when the new forms of communication and a more popular journalism are beginning to influence the public taste and on the intellectual works: it is a period of real publishing crisis.
L'ipocrisia dell'era vittoriana
The novel is set in an era when publishing was just a way to make money for most people; it was very common that writers mercificassero their content, writing just to sell and not a passion. However, in this hypocritical environment (we are in the Victorian era), there are still those at the cost of life and happiness persists in wanting to write what he likes and not what the public wants.
Despite George Gissing is a Victorian author (a bit 'misunderstood) his novel reveals modern and contemporary in its content.