 | This article relies largely or entirely on a single source .(October 2012) |
 Title page of the first edition | |
| Author | George Gissing |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Smith, Elder & Co. |
Publication date | 1888 |
| Publication place | England |
A Life's Morning is a novel by English author George Gissing. [1] Although written in the space of three months during 1886 it was first published, in serial form, beginning January 1888, in Cornhill Magazine [2] before being released by Smith, Elder & Co. as a novel.
Originally entitled Emily, it tells the story of a poor, yet cultivated, young woman, Emily Hood, from a small town in the north of England. While serving as a governess to a wealthy country family, she becomes enamored of her employer's son, Wilfrid Athel, and the two are engaged. However, during a visit to her parents' home, she is confronted by her father's employer, Dagworthy, who threatens to expose her father as a thief unless Emily marries him. The situation is resolved when Hood Sr. commits suicide to spare his family the shame of his deeds as he had, indeed, 'stolen' ten pounds from his employer.
Emily rejects Wilfrid, partly out of sympathy for her father, but they meet again, many years later, and are married.
Anne Brontë was an English novelist and poet, the youngest member of the Brontë literary family.
Charlotte Nicholls, commonly known as Charlotte Brontë, was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels became classics of English literature. She is best known for her novel Jane Eyre, which she published under the male pseudonym Currer Bell. Jane Eyre went on to become a success in publication, and is widely held in high regard in the gothic fiction genre of literature.
George Meredith was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. At first, his focus was poetry, influenced by John Keats among others, but Meredith gradually established a reputation as a novelist. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) briefly scandalised Victorian literary circles. Of his later novels, the most enduring is The Egoist (1879), though in his lifetime his greatest success was Diana of the Crossways (1885). His novels were innovative in their attention to characters' psychology, and also portrayed social change. His style, in both poetry and prose, was noted for its syntactic complexity; Oscar Wilde likened it to "chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning". Meredith was an encourager of other novelists, as well as an influence on them; among those to benefit were Robert Louis Stevenson and George Gissing. Meredith was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.
Thomas Hood was an English poet, author and humorist, best known for poems such as "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Shirt". Hood wrote regularly for The London Magazine, Athenaeum, and Punch. He later published a magazine largely consisting of his own works. Hood, never robust, had lapsed into invalidism by the age of 41 and died at the age of 45. William Michael Rossetti in 1903 called him "the finest English poet" between the generations of Shelley and Tennyson. Hood was the father of the playwright and humorist Tom Hood (1835–1874) and the children's writer Frances Freeling Broderip (1830–1878).
George Robert Gissing was an English novelist, who published 23 novels between 1880 and 1903. In the 1890s he was considered one of the three greatest novelists in England, and by the 1940s he had been recognised as a literary genius. Gissing's best-known works have reappeared in modern editions. They include The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893). He retains a small but devoted group of followers.
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The Hand of Ethelberta: A Comedy in Chapters is a novel by Thomas Hardy, published in 1876. It was written, in serial form, for The Cornhill Magazine, which was edited by Leslie Stephen, a friend and mentor of Hardy's. Unlike the majority of Hardy's fiction, the novel is a comedy, with both humour and a happy ending for the major characters and no suicides or tragic deaths. The late nineteenth century novelist George Gissing, who knew Hardy, considered it "surely old Hardy's poorest book".
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New Grub Street is a British novel by George Gissing published in 1891, which is set in the literary and journalistic circles of 1880s London. The story deals with the literary world that Gissing himself had experienced. Its title refers to the London street, Grub Street, which in the 18th century became synonymous with hack literature, although by Gissing's time, Grub Street itself no longer existed. Gissing revised and shortened the novel for a French edition of 1901.
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The Odd Women is an 1893 novel by the English novelist George Gissing. Its themes are the role of women in society, marriage, morals and the early feminist movement.
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Algernon Fred Gissing was an English novelist and the younger brother of George Gissing. He wrote 25 novels, two collections of short stories and several pieces of travel writing. He died from heart disease.
David Christie Murray was an English journalist, who also wrote fiction.
The Gissing family of Great Britain included several noted writers, Olympic competitors, and teachers.
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