The Gissing Revival

Iv THE GISSING REVIVAL· Collected Articles on George Glsslng. ed by Pierre Coustillas. Lond: Frank Cass; NY: Barnes and Noble, I968 [c. 1967]. $7.50. Professor Coustillas has, with Jacob Korg and Arthur C. Youne, probably done as much as anyone to revive interest in Gissing. Korg's influence as a student of Gissing is evident in the fact that he Is represented In this collection by three essays. One wishes that Coustillas had also included some of his own work on Gissing. In view of the fact that relatively little first-rate criticism of Gissing appeared until quite recent years, Coustillas had managed to make good use eß what there is. It is readily evident from the publication dates of the selections he has reprinted that the revaluation of Gissing began about 1955 with Jacob Korg's PMLA article. One might wish that Coustillas could have included some early reviews and essays by, say, Arnold Bennett (from Fame and Fiction. I9OI [originally, 1899] and H. G. Wells (an anonymous review from the London Saturday Review of the l890*s or his piece for the Contemporary Review of 1Ö97. The earliest essay reprinted here is Greenough White's of I898, and then there is nothine until Stanley Alden's article of 1922. One also wishes a few more recent articles might have been included, for example, Wendell V. Harris· study of Gissing's short stories (in Studies in Short Fiction. 1965), John Goode's study of The Nether World~Tln Tradition and Tolerance in Nineteenth-Century Fiction. I967), and Jack Zucker's "Gissing's Tragic Thought" (Glsslng Newsletter, I966). As it is, however, this collection does provide a useful introduction to a study of Gissing. The essays are unpretentiously arranged under three flexible headings : General Studies, Special Influences, Some Views of the Major Works. The major works referred to are New Grub Street. Born In Exile, The Whirlpool, and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft. Other works are, of course, also discussed in the first two sections of the collection. The book is made even more useful by a quite detailed index. Northern Illinois University H. E. Gerber ...