Abstract
It is typical of Gissing’s life that he spent most of it living in places that he hated. Wakefield, as Russell Kirk once commented, is “ingeniously designed for the torment of any man who cares for beauty and tradition.” (Coustillas, 1968, p. 3). From Workers in the Dawn (1880), his first published novel, to Will Warburton (1905), the last one he completed, and almost everywhere in between, Gissing’s repugnance to city life is vividly articulated. He always wished to live amidst what is soft and gentle; by necessity, until his last years, he was condemned to live amidst, and have constantly in front of him as subject-matter for his books, only what he loathed.
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Bibliography
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© 2006 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Halperin, J. (2006). Gissing’s Urban Neurasthenia. In: Spiers, J. (eds) Gissing and the City. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524453_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230524453_15
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