The Nether World (1889) is generally regarded as the finest of Gissing's early novels. A fast moving story of highly dramatic, sometimes violent scenes, it depicts life amongst the artisans, factory-girls, and slum-dwellers of Clerkenwell in the 1870s. But this is not just a novel of documentary realism. It is one man's mordant vision - shaped by bitter personal experience of poverty - of the quality of life endured by a variety of characters in the nether world. With Zolaesque intensity and relentlessness, Gissing lays bare the economic forces which determine the aspirations and expectations of those born to a life of labour. This is a tale of intrigue, as rapacious schemers try to wrest a fortune out of a mysterious old man who has returned to their midst, and of thwarted love. There is no sentimentality. This is a world in which the strong exercise power against their own kind, scheming and struggling for survival, a world from which, Gissing bleakly maintains, there can be no escape.
| ISBN | 019953828X | | Volumes | 1 | | ISBN13 | 9780199538287
(What's this?) | | Weight (grammes) | 305 | | Publisher | Oxford University Press | | Published in | Oxford | | Imprint | Oxford University Press | | Series title | Oxford World's Classics | | Format | Paperback | | Previous ISBN | 9780192837677 | | Publication date | 11 Dec 2008 | | Height (mm) | 196 | | Library of Congress | 2009290861 | | Width (mm) | 129 | | DEWEY | 823.8 | | Spine width (mm) | 20 | | DEWEY edition | DC22 | | Academic level | General | | Pages | 448 | |
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