Bücher von James Haydock

George Gissing's books, published during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, are memorable for their portraits of women. Only a few women played active roles in his life, but those who did exerted a lasting influence. In each of his novels he portrayed women vividly and with unerring realism. He worried, in fact, that some might see themselves in his books and rebuke him. His portraits of women are warm and human, revealing an essential sympathy that makes them timeless. An important feature of his novels, his feminine portraiture is worth careful study.

Every person in France is fully aware that Bonheur means happiness and well-being. But how does a wretch convicted of a petty crime find happiness or even survival in a prison known for its inhumanity? That place robbed me of my youth, my teeth, and my peace of mind while instilling within me a fierce desire to escape. Though I planned each escape with great care, something always went wrong. Perhaps I was the sorry victim of a malicious destiny. If so, that mysterious force, was up against the resilience of the human spirit, its power to endure. More than a few times I survived soul-shattering solitary confinement to run as fast and as far as I could. I had little muscle compared to the hulking convicts in French Guiana, but we all know strength is not defined by muscle alone. My narrative speaks of desperate attempts to escape the oppressive heat, horror, and corruption of the prison colony the French called Bagne de Cayenne.

You will find here a collection of original short stories that will take you on an inward journey to nowhere and everywhere. Beginning with "e;Erpenbeck and Friend"e; and ending with "e;Growing Old,"e; the journey will be easy and pleasant in some places, rough and rutted in others. Each story, as Mark Twain has said, will transport you to a faraway place and magically bring you home again for supper. Enjoy your meal, savor your supper.

My name is Jonathan Blue. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century, I worked many hours each day for acceptance as a writer. In my youth, I dreamed of becoming a classical scholar at Oxford or Cambridge. When the fantasy was shattered by a stupid excess of emotion, I attempted to begin a new life in America. A year later, I was living in a London slum with a drunken wife. In grim poverty, I wrote about poor people struggling to survive in slums among the worst in the world. They were my neighbors, and from them came inventive and motive force. In maturity I lived with a delicate and beautiful woman, but in failing health for a short time. Then like a turbulent river, I dashed unimpeded to the sea.

Bonheur was and is my name. Every person in my native France knew the name meant sunshine, well-being, happiness. But how does one find happiness in a prison known worldwide for its coarse and brutal inhumanity? Fifteen painful years, prime years of youth, I endured in that terrible place determined to escape. Though I planned each escape carefully, something always went wrong, and I found myself trying to survive in soul-shattering solitary confinement. I was small of statue and not very strong compared to the hulking convicts I lived with, and yet I need not remind you that strength comes in many forms.

Half biography and half critical study, this book about George Gissing is for the general reader. It draws a parallel between the women in Gissing's life and the women in his novels. His books span the last two decades of the nineteenth century and are memorable for their portraits of women. Only a few women played active roles in Gissing's life, but all exerted a lasting influence. Their imprint allowed him to portray women vividly and with unerring realism, though at times in variable tones of gray...in charcoal. Gissing's feminine portraiture, rendered in shades of somber experience, is one of the most striking features of his work and one of the most valuable for the reader of today. It derived from his intense and abiding interest in the women of his time and the way they lived their lives. His portraits of women, warm and human, were shaped in all their detail by an essential sympathy that made them neither topical nor contemporary but timeless. Some of the women in his life became models for fictional women as alive today as when he first created them.