The 100 best novels: No 28 New Grub Street by George Gissing (1891)

George Gissing's portrayal of the hard facts of a literary life remains as relevant today as it was in the late 19th century



Robert McCrum introduces the series

New Grub Street is the first novel in this series explicitly to address, in a realistic narrative, the contemporary working conditions of a new class, the professional author. George Gissing, born the son of a chemist in 1857, was breaking important new ground, as well as responding to significant cultural change in the literary generation after Dickens (David Copperfield) and Thackeray (Pendennis).

By contrast, the eponymous hero of David Copperfield (No 15 in this series) is a writer, of course, but Dickens's focus is chiefly on Copperfield's childhood, not his career as a novelist. He never delves as painfully as Gissing does into the threadbare texture of Victorian literary life.