George Gissing’s Scrapbook: A Storehouse of ‘Elements of Drama to be Fused and Minted in his Brain’

Abstract

On 29 April 1958 the Parke-Bernet Galleries at New York auctioned a lot that they described in their catalogue as ‘a very interesting and important group of Gissing’s writings in his autograph. Being manuscript notes written mainly in connection with his works and novels.’ This material (defined as ‘the property of a lady’) was doubtless offered for sale by Alfred Gissing, the writer’s younger son, into whose hands many of his father’s miscellaneous papers had passed from his uncle Algernon by the mid-twenties of this century. Through the thirties Alfred Gissing had regularly been disposing of the manuscript material and valuable books and papers left by his father and he continued to add to his income in this way after he settled in Switzerland soon after the Second World War. In offering his father’s literary documents and private papers for sale, he would often discreetly hide his identity behind that of an unspecified ‘Continental lady’, a ploy which seems to betray a slight sense of guilt as to the frittering away of his father’s artistic inheritance.