A Writer of Books

This extraordinary novel, virtually unavailable since its publication in 1899, provides a rare insight into the world of late Victorian authors, which has generally been considered a male stronghold. Here is the "distaff" side of George Gissing's New Grub Street: Cosima Chudleigh, a sheltered, bookish twenty-two-year-old, comes to London to begin what she firmly believes will be a career as a respected novelist. She has an unshakeable determination to study life and to acquire experience; this, combined with her lack of practical knowledge of society, causes her to struggle with trauma after trauma, trapped as she is by rigid social conventions. She encounters an interesting panorama of characters, among whom are Bess Heywood, a beautiful lesbian actress who carries on a relentless vendetta against men who have taken advantage of her friends, and Quentin Mallory, a historian who values and encourages the attempts of women to break out of suffocating confinement. Cosima must rebel against the social code, which is some extent she has invoked against her own best interests.

A Writer of Books marks the climax of a decade of feminist fiction that had reshaped the role of literature in British social debates. This novel pushes the boundaries of gender definition, and attacks simultaneously the conventions of domestic life and what could or could not be addressed in fiction.

George Paston (Emily Morse Symonds)