George Gissing: a Bibliography by Michael Collie (review)

430 LETTERS IN CANADA 1976 no means self-evident, and I wish Summerfield had commented as freely on these as he does on the poetry, pictures, and work which were partly animated by the vision, partly done in defiance of it. This is my only quarrel with a biography that in other ways is a rich, lively, and scholarly work. Summerfield's accounts of the theosophical household of Upper Ely Place, of AE'S work for Plunkett's LA.O.S ., of his journalism, his galactic Sundays, and so on, display a mastery not only of the life and works of AE but of the Irish literary and political scene more generally. As a portrait of AE in contextthis is an excellent biography, and considering the man and the context this makes it an important book. If the essential mystery of the man remains intact, that no doubt is what AE wanted. (MICHAEL SIDNELL) Michael Collie. George Gissing: a Bibliography. University of Toronto Press. xiv, 129. $15.00 George Gissing, though never a popular writer, has always commanded the devotion of a small band of discerning readers. But those who have relished the photographic accuracy of his descriptions, the keenness of his psychological insight, and the terse maturity of his prose have been vastly outnumbered by those who would agree with James Joyce's description of his works as pastefazoi (noodles and beans). In his own day this lack of popularity limited the number of printings of his books (eleven of his first thirteen novels were published as three-deckers, none of which was printed in more than a thousand copies) and led to the present rarity of early editions, contemporary issues, and reprints of Gissing titles. During the last two decades there has been a resurgence of interest in Gissing, (demonstrated by such admirable works as Gillian Tindall's The Born Exile, Jacob Korg's biography, Young's and Coustillas 's editions of some of the letters), but there has been no major critical work, no collection of letters, few modern editions of the works, and, until now, no bibliography. If ever an author were in need of a bibliography it is George Gissing, and it is therefore all the more distressing to have to issue a caveat emptor in regard to the one Professor Collie has compiled. In his Preface the author states that he has limited his bibliography to a listing of all the works published during Gissing's lifetime and the first appearance of works published posthumously, since ' between 1903 and 1960 no attempt was made to edit the text of any reissue' (p xii). Thus there are no entries for the first American editions of New Grub Street (IX) and Will Warburton (xxv) and no full entry for the important first American edition of Workers in the Dawn (which included indications of Gissing 's corrections to volume one of the first edition). And, despite the 1903 limit, 1905 reissues of three titles are included. Privately printed HUMANITIES 431 publications are simply brief-listed in the Preface, for 'not one of them enjoys a critical position in the Gissing canon' (p xiii). Serial publications are not included because 'an accurate listing of Gissing's short stories has been published by Pierre Coustillas in English Literature in Transition, 7, no. 2 (1964) ... and to duplicate this ... seems quite unnecessary' (p. xiii). For works about Gissing the reader is referred to Joseph Wolff's annotated bibliography of "973. However, Collie defends these exclusions by affirming that the emphasis of his bibliography is one of priority, that the establishment of the text is 'a vital first step towards an authoritative description of Gissing's publishing life' (p xii) and that 'the purpose of this bibliography would have been served if the more definite identification of the books themselves led to a more profound appreciation of what Gissing wrote' (p xiv). Such definite identification is possible only if the information in the bibliography is clear and accurate. As a collector of Gissing who has tried to use the book I must regretfully report that much of Collie's bibliography is neither. Entries are numbered with Roman numerals (more cumbersome than...