In looking at the realist frame of reference for Gissing's New Grub Street what the reader expected to receive was a story of literary endeavour and romantic interest. The structure of the novel has as its template the interweaving stories of two couples, rather in the manner of the greatest realist novel Middlemarch. With the careful observation of type and social class there is a resonance with Dickens' work which Gissing knew and critiqued, and was after all the mainstay of the late Victorian reading public. There are strong biographical threads in the work. Gissing was suffering from the same creative and financial pressures as his protagonist Reardon, tied in the same manner to pre-negotiated fees and a rigid format for his works. We have therefore the main characters set before us, balanced and positioned in a realistic manner and Gissing moves on beyond these bounds to show...