• Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Orwell and Gissing

Orwell and Gissing

Hardcover

Series: American University Studies, Book 185

Literary CriticismBritish History

ISBN10: 0820433306
ISBN13: 9780820433301
Publisher: Peter Lang Inc Intl Academic P
Published: Oct 1 1997
Pages: 128
Weight: 0.78
Height: 0.38 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Three generations of critics have commented on the parallels between George Orwell and his favorite novelist, George Gissing. I am a great fan of his, Orwell wrote in 1948, proclaiming that England has produced very few better novelists. This in-depth study reveals that Orwell drew heavily on the Gissing novels he admired in shaping his own. Gissing's New Grub Street and The Odd Women directly influenced Orwell's Depression-era novels Keep the Aspidstra Flying and A Clergyman's Daughter. Even Orwell's most imaginative work, Animal Farm, mirrors Gissing's own novel of a failed Socialist Utopia, Demos. Gissing was Orwell's role model and alter ego. Gissing provided him with a touchstone to his beliefs, his pessimism, his love of Dickens and cozy corners, his suspicion of progress, his restless sexuality. To understand Orwell fully, one must first read Gissing.

Also in

Literary Criticism