GISSING, George.
The Unclassed, A Novel … in three Volumes.
London, Chapman and Hall, 1884.
Three vols bound in one, 8vo, with half-titles; a few marks to early leaves, very small chip to upper margin of vol. II C2 and marginal inkstain to p. 305, short closed tear to lower inner margin of vol. III E3; a very good, clean copy bound in the publisher’s red cloth (see below), ruled in black with spine lettered in gilt; boards a little rubbed, spine cracked and sunned, head- and tailcaps worn and chipped with small losses.
First edition of Gissing’s second novel – and Bernard Shaw’s favourite of his novels – in the single-volume remaindered issue in red cloth.
The Unclassed, Gissing’s second published novel but often thought to be his first due to the poor sale of Workers in the Dawn (1880), follows the career of a struggling writer married to a cynical young prostitute. The work marked a turning point in Gissing’s career as a novelist, as ‘the years between 1880 and 1883, though full of suffering and virtually empty of tangible achievement, had seen his coming to maturity as a writer’ (Halperin, p. 52). With its controversial subject matter, it was first rejected by Bentley before it was accepted by Chapman & Hall, subject to revisions. ‘[Gissing] was impressed and flattered that his enthusiastic publisher’s reader was George Meredith, one of his literary idols. He obediently rewrote volume III, and, he declared, greatly improved it’ (Quaritch). The work was published to mixed reviews. While the Graphic called it ‘unpleasant’ and the Athenaeum ‘inept’, it was lauded by the Evening News for its ‘terrible realism’ and its kinship with Zola (Halperin, pp. 55–56).
The present work is a fine example of the chequered early publication history of Gissing’s novels: due to slow sales, the sheets were remaindered and issued as a single volume, case-bound in red cloth as here.
Collie II a; Quaritch, George Gissing … A chronological Catalogue of the Pforzheimer Collection (1992) 9; see Halperin, Gissing, A Life in Books (1982).
