Gissing now turned to the submerged tenth of literature, and in describing
it he managed to combine a problem or thesis with just the amount of
characterisation and plotting sanctioned by the novel convention of the
day. The convention may have been better than we think, for _New Grub
Street_ is certainly its author's most effective work. The characters are
numerous, actual, and alive. The plot is moderately good, and lingers in
the memory with some obstinacy. The problem is more open to criticism, and
it has indeed been criticised from more points of view than one.

'In _New Grub Street_,' says one of his critics,[13] 'Mr. Gissing
has endeavoured to depict the shady side of literary life in an age
dominated by the commercial spirit. On the whole, it is in its realism
perhaps the least convincing of his novels, whilst being undeniably
the most depressing. It is not that Gissing's picture of poverty in
the literary profession is wanting in the elements of truth, although
even in that profession there is even more eccentricity than the
author leads us to suppose in the social position and evil plight of
such men as Edwin Reardon and Harold Biffen. But the contrast between
Edwin Reardon, the conscientious artist loving his art and working for
its sake, and Jasper Milvain, the man of letters, who prospers simply
because he is also a man of business, which is the main feature of the
book and the principal support of its theme, strikes one throughout as
strained to the point of unreality. In the first place, it seems
almost impossible that a man of Milvain's mind and instincts should
have deliberately chosen literature as the occupation of his life;
with money and success as his only aim he would surely have become a
stockbroker or a moneylender. In the second place, Edwin Reardon's
dire failure, with his rapid descent into extreme poverty, is clearly
traceable not so much to a truly artistic temperament in conflict with