A Charming Family

George Gissing

Kessinger Publishing, Jun 1, 2004 - Fiction - 48 pages

Oh, don't let that trouble you, dear Miss Shepperson, ' cried the other gaily. 'In a family, so little difference is made by an extra person. I assure you it is a perfectly businesslike arrangement; otherwise my husband, who is prudence itself, would never have sanctioned it. As you know, we are suffering a temporary embarrassment. I wrote to you yesterday before my husband's return from business. When he came home, I learnt, to my dismay, that it might be rather more than a month before he was able to send you a cheque.

About the author

Recent years have seen a strong revival of interest in Gissing, many of whose novels are now available in reprints. A bridge between late Victorianism and early modernism, Gissing's novels combine two essential themes of the period; the isolation and struggle of the artist and the economic bondage of the proletariat. New Grub Street (1891) and his own indirect autobiography, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), reveal the close connection in Gissing between fiction and autobiography. Workers in the Dawn (1880) and Demos: A Story of English Socialism (1892) dramatizes Gissing's conviction that economic and class divisions are central to human character and individual destiny.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Charming Family
• Author: George Gissing
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Kessinger Publishing, 2004
• ISBN: 1419100378, 9781419100376
• Length: 48 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Literary