Although he was once best known as the author of a volume of essays, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (1903), George Gissing is now recognized as one of the important novelists of the late Victorian period. His reputation rests on the long series of novels he wrote between 1880 and 1903, most of them realistic exposures of the injustices of modern industrial society. His early books, which often dealt with scenes of urban poverty, gave the impression that he was a slum novelist, but in the second part of his career he turned to middle-class settings and devoted his mature powers to a widely ranging criticism of ordinary society. Gissing had a special gift for linking private lives with public issues and for showing how sensitive young people were victimized by social forces. Using this approach, he dealt with such themes as poverty, the social disabilities of women, the problems...