Abstract
This chapter considers the relationship between Gissing’s 1891 novel of literary life, New Grub Street, and Balzac’s portrait of journalism and its discontents, Illusions perdues (Lost Illusions, 1837–43). Charting the ways in which certain of Gissing’s contemporaries—in both Britain and France—highlighted the Victorian novelist’s debt to a French literary tradition, the chapter traces a set of overlapping motifs between both novels, and explores depictions of literary labour and the literary marketplace in the British and French contexts.
To write—was not that the joy and the privilege of one who had an urgent message for the world?
—George Gissing, New Grub Street
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
On this point, see Goode’s chapter on New Grub Street (1978, 109–41). Concerned with questions about literature and labour, Goode observes: ‘New Grub Street is very much a trade novel, not about mass culture, but about work, the conditions and remuneration of work’. He goes on to explore Marian’s perspective on writing and its uses: ‘She puts the question in terms of the alienating effect of capitalism—the contradiction between use-value and exchange-value (“commodity”), and like a worker locked in a labour process which can have no meaning (since one’s work, seen in its broadest perspective, is not for someone but for an abstraction, the market)’ (119–20). For further critical approaches, see Poole (1975, 136–56) and Matz (2010, 70–104).
- 2.
Allen references Gissing’s interest in Balzac, evident in his correspondence, and stresses the fact that ‘Gissing’s knowledge of French literature, although often acknowledged, has never been the subject of sustained attention’ (2013, 187).
- 3.
For a discussion of Gissing’s later years, see Coustillas (2011, 3). Note in particular his remarks on the publication of Gissing’s fiction in French (171–2).
- 4.
On sexuality and Le Cousin Pons, see Lucey (2003, esp. 141–54).
- 5.
Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
- 6.
For James, a great deal of contemporary fiction, Gissing’s included, was so reliant on dialogue that it failed to develop a subtle exploration of the passing of time. James’s advice to authors ignorant of this particular ‘secret’ turns out to involve a heavy dose of Balzac: ‘We feel tempted to send many an author, to learn the rudiments of this secret, back to his Balzac again, the most accomplished master of it’ (Coustillas and Partridge, 293).
- 7.
The same point might be made of Balzac, whose reflection on the literary field in Illusions perdues also appears to prefigure something of the logic of Bourdieu’s analysis in The Rules of Art. Cohen highlights this fact in her pathbreaking study, The Sentimental Education of the Novel, when she notes that ‘Bourdieu does not acknowledge how much he learned from Illusions perdues’ (2002, 6).
- 8.
As Poole remarks (1975, 141): ‘The “new literary man” is a hard-working professional who hires out his labour at different levels, contributing to different grades of magazine and journal […].’
- 9.
On the role of money and markets in New Grub Street, see Simon James’s reading of the novel, ‘Art and the Marketplace: New Grub Street’ (2003, 94–106).
- 10.
- 11.
On this point, see Simon James (2003, 96–7). As he notes, ‘the machine is Marian herself’ (96).
- 12.
The sense that society operates according to some hidden mechanism lies at the heart of Illusions perdues, a point the wily journalist Lousteau reveals to the novice Lucien early in the text (see 257–8).
- 13.
Blondet also makes this point in Illusions perdues (1974, 321).
- 14.
In some respects, Gissing’s fiction comes closer to this rather bleak assessment of Balzac than to the sense of benevolence so often associated with Dickens. On this point about Gissing’s comparisons of Dickens with Balzac, see Matz (2010, 96–8).
Works Cited
Allen, M. D. (2013) ‘“Intriguing Plebians” and Hypergamous Desire: Paul Bourget’s Le Discipline and Born in Exile’, in George Gissing and the Woman Question, ed. Christine Huguet and Simon J. James. Farnham: Ashgate, 185–95.
Balzac, Honoré de. (1974) Illusions perdues. Paris: Gallimard.
Balzac, Honoré de. (2002) Les Journalistes. Monographie de la presse parisienne. Paris: Boucher.
Bourdieu, Pierre. (1992) Les Règles de l’art: genèse et structure du champ littéraire. Paris: Seuil.
Casanova, Pascale. (2004) The World Republic of Letters, trans. M. B. Debevoise. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cohen, Margaret. (2002) The Sentimental Education of the Novel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Coustillas, Pierre. (2011–12) The Heroic Life of George Gissing, 3 vols. London: Pickering & Chatto.
Coustillas, Pierre and Colin Partridge (eds). (1995) George Gissing: The Critical Heritage. London and New York: Routledge.
Gissing, George. (1898) Charles Dickens: A Critical Study. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company.
Gissing, George. (1993) New Grub Street, ed. John Goode. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goode, John. (1978) George Gissing: Ideology and Fiction. London: Vision.
James, Simon J. (2003) Unsettled Accounts: Money and Narrative in the Novels of George Gissing. London: Anthem Press.
Jusdanis, Gregory. (2010) Fiction Agonistes: In Defense of Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Lanchester, John. (2016) ‘Brexit Blues’, London Review of Books, 38 (15): 3–6.
Lucey, Michael. (2003) The Misfit of the Family: Balzac and the Social Forms of Sexuality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Matz, Aaron. (2010) Satire in an Age of Realism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pinson, Guillaume. (2012) L’Imaginaire médiatique. Histoire et fiction du journal au XIXe siècle. Paris: Classiques Garnier.
Poole, Adrian. (1975) Gissing in Context. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Prendergast, Christopher. (1986) The Order of Mimesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Prendergast, Christopher. (2004) ‘The World Republic of Letters’, in Debating World Literature, ed. Christopher Prendergast. London: Verso, 1–25.
Thérenty, Marie-Ève. (2007) La Littérature au quotidien. Poétiques journalistiques au XIXe siècle. Paris: Seuil.
Wells, H. G. (1961) ‘George Gissing: An Impression’, in George Gissing and H. G. Wells. Their Friendship and Correspondence, ed. Royal A. Gettmann. London: Hart-Davis, 260–77.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Birch, E. (2018). Literary Machines: George Gissing’s Lost Illusions. In: Waithe, M., White, C. (eds) The Labour of Literature in Britain and France, 1830-1910. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55253-2_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55253-2_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55252-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-55253-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)