Product Description

The Nether World (1889) is generally regarded as the finest of Gissing's early novels. A fast moving story of highly dramatic, sometimes violent scenes, it depicts life amongst the artisans, factory-girls, and slum-dwellers of Clerkenwell in the 1870s. But this is not just a novel of documentary realism. It is one man's mordant vision - shaped by bitter personal experience of poverty - of the quality of life endured by a variety of characters in the nether world. With Zolaesque intensity and relentlessness, Gissing lays bare the economic forces which determine the aspirations and expectations of those born to a life of labour. This is a tale of intrigue, as rapacious schemers try to wrest a fortune out of a mysterious old man who has returned to their midst, and of thwarted love. There is no sentimentality. This is a world in which the strong exercise power against their own kind, scheming and struggling for survival, a world from which, Gissing bleakly maintains, there can be no escape.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #951848 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

About the Author
Stephen Gill is at Oxford University and Fellow of Lincoln College.

Customer Reviews

Typical Depressing times
I read this book for a class. I found it interesting, but it is certainly not one I would pick for a little weekend reading. It is very heavy, and depressing -- which is very typical of the British Victorian Era (when discussing the working class). It traces the lives of a number of working class people and their trials. Being that life for them was not a very optomistic place it is easy to understand why this book is rather dark. It took a while to get into, but once into it I did enjoy it. (as much as possible).