New Grub Street by George Gissing: A Preview and Reading Schedule
Join us starting November 6 to read George Gissing's New Grub Street with Yiyun Li
We're delighted to have Yiyun Li joining us to host an APS Together reading of George Gissing's New Grub Street. We start Monday, November 6 and finish mid-December. Yiyun's daily notes will be posted here every morning. A preview, and the reading schedule, are below.
A Note from Yiyun Li
“I tell you, writing is a business… We talk of literature as a trade, not of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare… I speak only of good, coarse, marketable stuff for the world’s vulgar," says a character in New Grub Street, a novel about the publishing world in London in the 1880s. The character might as well have been talking about the state of publishing in the twenty-first century. George Gissing's own life story was as novelistic as any Dickens novel, and he had very little wish to sugarcoat the reality for his readers. Not only is there no sugarcoating in New Grub Street, but there is not even a thin layer of dusting sugar in this novel. For the next thirty-seven days, I invite APS Together readers to read this clear-eyed and unsentimental novel about the business of making literature, the (possible or impossible) livelihood of writers, and many other topics that are highly relevant today.
Daily Reading
Day 1 (November 6). Chapter 1
Day 2 (November 7). Chapter 2
Day 3 (November 8). Chapter 3
Day 4 (November 9). Chapter 4
Day 5 (November 10). Chapter 5
Day 6 (November 11). Chapter 6
Day 7 (November 12). Chapter 7
Day 8 (November 13). Chapter 8
Day 9 (November 14). Chapter 9
Day 10 (November 15). Chapter 10
Day 11 (November 16). Chapter 11
Day 12 (November 17). Chapter 12
Day 13 (November 18). Chapter 13
Day 14 (November 19). Chapter 14
Day 15 (November 20). Chapter 15
Day 16 (November 21). Chapter 16
Day 17 (November 22). Chapter 17
Day 18 (November 23). Chapter 18
Day 19 (November 24). Chapter 19
Day 20 (November 25). Chapter 20
Day 21 (November 26). Chapter 21
Day 22 (November 27). Chapter 22
Day 23 (November 28). Chapter 23
Day 24 (November 29). Chapter 24
Day 25 (November 30). Chapter 25
Day 26 (December 1). Chapter 26
Day 27 (December 2). Chapter 27
Day 28 (December 3). Chapter 28
Day 29 (December 4). Chapter 29
Day 30 (December 5). Chapter 30
Day 31 (December 6). Chapter 31
Day 32 (December 7). Chapter 32
Day 33 (December 8). Chapter 33
Day 34 (December 9). Chapter 34
Day 35 (December 10). Chapter 35
Day 36 (December 11). Chapter 36
Day 37 (December 12). Chapter 37
Yiyun Li is the author of several books, including Wednesday's Child and The Book of Goose (both FSG); Where Reasons End, which received the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life (both Random House); and Tolstoy Together (A Public Space Books). She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Windham-Campbell Prize, and the PEN/Malamud Award, among other honors. A contributing editor to A Public Space, she teaches at Princeton University. Her essay “Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life” appeared in A Public Space No. 19.
George Gissing (1857-1903) was an English novelist who published twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. Noted for the unflinching realism of his novels about the lower middle class, his best-known works include The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893).
Oh! I’ve just started reading! Will put it down until Monday x
Really looking forward to diving into this book. Have never read Gissing.