Review by Fumio Hojoh. The Gissing Journal. Volume XL, Number 4 (October, 2004): 32-37.

Mitsuharu Matsuoka (ed.), The World of Gissing: In the Year of the Centenary, Tokyo: Eihosha,2003.

This useful volume was published to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of Gissing’s death.
The cover displays Gissing’s portrait against a dark sky broken by streaks of orange light from thesun, which hangs half above the horizon. It may be a moment of sunrise, but some would take it as amoment of sunset. Whichever it is, setting the portrait against such a glowing sky makes Gissing
look like a prophet. But if he is a prophet, what is his prophecy? It is by no means a simple message
that can be summarized in a short paragraph. The book reveals him in his ambivalence andcomplexity.

The book’s subtitle, in a faithful English translation, is Attempts to Investigate his Whole World. InJapan, as in other countries, Gissing has been known best as the author of The Private Papers ofHenry Ryecroft; indeed, Ryecroft was so beloved by readers who were high-school or university
students before and after World War II, and read it as one of their English textbooks, that it has
eclipsed his other works. The present book’s editor, Mitsuharu Matsuoka, says in his preface that it is
his wish, as well as the wish of his co-authors, to show Japanese readers the many various andversatile aspects of Gissing.

Of the 15 chapters, 11 are written by relatively young Japanese scholars. One of these 11 chapters
covers Gissing’s short stories; each of the others deals with a single significant work. The other fourchapters are by the so-called founding fathers (or might they better be called brothers?) of theGissing Journal and, through it, Gissing studies: Pierre Coustillas, Shigeru Koike and Jacob Korg.
Korg’s two chapters, on the life of Gissing and on those novels and novellas not covered elsewherein this book are Japanese translations of previous publications, while Coustillas’s chapter on thehistory of Gissing criticism is a translation of the paper he read in abridged form at the Gissing
Conference in London last year. Koike’s chapter on Gissing and Dickens was written especially forthis book. Matsuoka acknowledges in his preface how much we owe to the academic achievementsof these three predecessors.

In the chapters by Japanese authors, the first few pages are devoted to a fairly detailed account of theplot of the novel under consideration, or to a summary of content in the case of a book like By theIonian Sea. This is very helpful not only for newcomers to Gissing’s world but also to those familiar
with his works, because names, dates, places, and incidents often slip from memory and are notalways easy to track down.

Following the summary, each author presents his or her reading of the novel. Because these are themost interesting sections, it seems appropriate to give a brief description of their content, eventhough such short descriptions cannot, of course, cover an author’s entire argument.

The Japanese authors are all university teachers. Instead of including their titles and affiliations,however, let me just add Ms. and Mr. to their names, for Gissing would be pleased to learn that,among the scholars following the founding fathers, we have women as well as men. What follows is
the table of contents and brief descriptions of some chapters.

The Editor’s Preface (Mitsuharu Matsuoka)

Message to Japanese Gissingites (Pierre Coustillas)

Gissing Bibliography (Mitsuharu Matsuoka)

Ch. 1. The Life of Gissing (Jacob Korg)
Translation of “George Gissing,” Dictionary of Literary Biography, ed. Ira B. Nadel and William E.
Fredemann.

Ch. 2. A Cavalcade of Gissing Criticism in the Last Hundred Years (Pierre Coustillas)
Translation of Coustillas’s paper on the subject as mentioned above.

Ch. 3. The Unclassed (Ms Harumi Kuramochi)
H. Kuramochi relates the novel to the social problems of the latter half of the nineteenth century: thepoverty of the lower classes (mentioning some of the movements to improve their living conditions);
the difficulties poor women faced in supporting themselves; and the decline of traditional Christianfaith. She points out that even though the novel depicts ruthless realities, it is not entirely pessimistic
in its approach to the two main characters, Osmond Waymark and Ida Starr, unlike the situation in
Workers in the Dawn.

Ch. 4. The Nether World (Mr. Saburo Kuramochi)
This essay begins by surveying the history of political unrest centered in Clerkenwell, the scene of
The Nether World, and discusses how the place, together with the death of his first wife, inspired
Gissing to write the novel. S. Kuramochi also argues that while the novel faithfully reflects the lives

of working people, each worker is given his own personality and values, instead of being presented
as a stereotype.

Ch. 5. New Grub Street (Mr. Mitsuharu Matsuoka)
The contemporary circumstances that alienated “unpractical” writers from Victorian society arediscussed. Then Matsuoka argues that although Gissing makes use of his own experiences as an
unsuccessful novelist, he is both critical of, as well as sympathetic to, those writers’ idealism andaloofness. He adds that Gissing is also ambivalent about educating the poor. Indeed, his ambivalence
toward all aspects of Victorian society is what post characterizes Gassing, Matsuoka says.

Ch. 6. Born in Exile (Mr. Ryota Kanayama)
Kanayama poses a question: Is Godwin Peak a mutant or a creature controlled by heredity (referringto Darwinism, eugenics, and such works as Théodule-Armand Ribot’s L’hérédité psychologique).
Godwin’s downfall is due to his lower middle-class background as well as to his hypocrisy, heargues; a person of higher social class could have overcome the handicap of such hypocrisy. Thus
Peak’s tragedy is due to his social situation rather than to heredity. Gissing who, unlike Peak, had afirm intellectual belief in himself, seems to be exorcising his former self by presenting his double inPeak, Kanayama says.

Ch. 7. The Odd Women (Ms. Mihoko Takeda)
Takeda focuses on Monica, who is situated on the periphery (or beyond safe boundaries) of London
at the end of the century, and whom she regards as a “female flaneur.” Takeda proceeds to analyze
what she calls Monica’s hysteria, suggesting that it arises because she is forced into the traditional
female stereotype mould, while in fact she is torn between heterosesual love and her interest inRhoda. Takeda concludes that, in spite ofhis sympathetic insight into the situation of women in Victorian society, Gissing’s view of women isboth progressive and conventional.

Ch. 8. Sleeping Fires (Ms Ayaka Komiya)This short novel is exceptional among Gassing’s fiction because of its happy ending, Komiya says.
Unlike the heroes of Gassing’s other novels, who repulse the realities around them and assume
escapist attitudes, Edmund Langley ultimately finds his happiness in everyday life. Komiya
discusses the influence of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám on this novella on the basis of internaland external evidence.

Ch. 9. The Whirlpool (Ryoko Ota)Ota takes up some of the problems which beset the main characters and approaches the novel byjuxtaposing alternative choices: whether one should marry or enjoy a life of celibacy; whether one
should live in a flat or in a house in the country; whether or not a man should have an occupation;
whether a woman should be a housewife or have a career of her own. She pays special attention to
the treatment of flats and houses, relating them to the novel’s theme. In her final section she
considers the novel in the context or adultery literature.

Ch. 10. By the Ionian Sea (Mr. Yukimitsu Namiki)
Namiki examines how reading ancient Roman history motivated Gissing to travel to Calabria andinspired him to write By the Ionian Sea. He also compares this book with travel writing by otherauthors and concludes that what distinguishes By the Ionian Sea is the images of ancient Greece andRome which Gissing is perpetually reconstructing, even from slight associations, in his mind’s eye,and Gissing’s interest in the contemporary people he encounters in the course of his travels.

Ch. 11. The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (Mr. Noriaki Kato)
Kato points out, quoting from other critics, the melancholy tone, aloofness, and nihilistic attitudeseen in Ryecroft. For all that, he argues, Ryecroft lets its readers share its protagonist’s experiencesand gives them chances to review their own values and way of living.

Ch. 12. The Other Novels (Jacob Korg)
A translation from George Gissing: A Critical Biography.

Ch. 13. The Short Stories (Mr. Masahiko Yahata)
Gissing’s representative short stories -- such as “The Day of Silence,” “Raw Material,” and “TheLight on the Tower” -- are introduced with their plots and themes. Frustration and defeat are therepeated context of these stories, but Yahata says some of there seem to suggest that, amidst
disappointment and illusion, people can be blessed with modest hope and happiness.

Ch. 14. Gissing and Dickens (Shigeru Koike)
Gissing’s books and essays on Dickens are introduced, with particular attention to Charles Dickens:
A Critical Study. Koike claims that, in spite of his unpretentious and unsystematic approach toDickens, Gissing was actually breaking new ground and presenting what have now become some of
the basic concepts about Dickens.

Ch. 15. Gissing Information Resources (Mitsuharu Matsuoka)

Chronology of Gissing’s Life and Works

On the whole, the essays which I have introduced above are challenging and stimulating, although afew tend to be more a general introduction to a work than a personal reading of it.

The last chapter is a marvelous contribution to Gissing studies that provides a variety of information
about academic tools: international conferences on Gissing, relevant institutes, and Gissing on theInternet, book-shops specializing in materials by and about Gissing, in addition to Japanesetranslations of his books, and books and articles on Gissing by Japanese researchers in particular.
Matsuoka has already made a great contribution by creating digital versions of Gissing texts, and hisefforts have been widely appreciated by all Gissingites in other countries. Indeed, the entire bookwill benefit specialists in English literature more than the general readers for whom this work seems
to have been originally intended.

It has to be admitted here that the book’s stance is rather ambiguous in that regard. The editor choseto deal with those novels that have Japanese translations, obviously keeping in mind those generalreaders who have to depend on translated texts. In each article, however, those passages quoted fromthe original text-which are essential in following the argument-are printed without Japanesetranslation (except in Chapter 14), which makes me suspect that the book is, after all, meant to beappreciated by readers who are already students of the subject and do not have to depend on
translations. If so, it is regrettable that such important novels as Demos and The Emancipated were
not allotted individual chapters, although they are taken up in Chapter 12. Given the present difficult
situation surrounding the publication of academic books, however, I do not intend to criticize theeditor. If all the quotations from the original texts had been translated, or more chapters added, thisbook would have become too voluminous to be published at a moderate price. I can well imagine thecompromises which Mr. Matsuoka had to make.

We might say that things have remained unchanged since the days of New Grub Street, and that if weare to be “practical,” the best way to introduce general readers to Gissing is to have one of his novelsmade into a TV drama, with a popular star as the hero or heroine. On the other hand, many things
have changed greatly since then, literature among them; it no longer relates itself to contemporary
reality in the way Gissing’s works do. Thus, all in all, this is a difficult age for efforts to invite theaverage reader into Gissing’s world. For that reason, it is all the more delightful that Japanesescholars have commemorated this centenary by placing this garland of a book before his grave.

-- Fumio Hojoh