A Garland for Gissing

Book excerpt: The crown upon the continuing vitality and popularity of Gissing studies in the final decade of the twentieth century was the publication of The Collected Letters of George Gissing (1990-97). The editors of that mammoth undertaking, Paul Mattheisen, Arthur Young and Pierre Coustillas, had long been an inspiration to the younger generation of Gissing scholars, and their presence at the International George Gissing Conference at Amsterdam in September 1999 explained the success of the encounter between Gissing's older and younger critics. Ever since the reappraisal of Gissing's works began to get under way in the early 1960s through the publication of many new editions of the works and ground-breaking critical studies by Arthur Young, Jacob Korg and Pierre Coustillas, it has become impossible to ignore the high status he now enjoys by rights, which resembles the position granted to him long ago by his contemporaries, as one of the leading English novelists of the late nineteenth century. This collection of essays is remarkable for its emphasis on women's issues addressed in Gissing's novels, ranging from the inadequate education of women to the struggle for greater female independence, within and without marriage. Several contributors seek to define the precise nature and quality of Gissing's achievement and his place in the canon and, in the process, they open up fascinating, new opportunities for future research.