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In the Year of Jubilee
A novel from Gissing's best period
423 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 1893
About the author
George Gissing
297 books182 followersPeople best know British writer George Robert Gissing for his novels, such as
New Grub Street
(1891), about poverty and hardship.
This English novelist who published twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.
Born to lower-middle-class parents, Gissing went to win a scholarship to Owens College, the present-day University of Manchester. A brilliant student, he excelled at university, winning many coveted prizes, including the Shakespeare prize in 1875. Between 1891 and 1897 (his so-called middle period) he produced his best works, which include New Grub Street, Born in Exile , The Odd Women , In the Year of Jubilee , and The Whirlpool . The middle years of the decade saw his reputation reach new heights: some critics count him alongside George Meredith and Thomas Hardy, the best novelists of his day. He also enjoyed new friendships with fellow writers such as Henry James, and H.G. Wells, and came into contact with many other up-and-coming writers such as Joseph Conrad and Stephen Crane.
This English novelist who published twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.
Born to lower-middle-class parents, Gissing went to win a scholarship to Owens College, the present-day University of Manchester. A brilliant student, he excelled at university, winning many coveted prizes, including the Shakespeare prize in 1875. Between 1891 and 1897 (his so-called middle period) he produced his best works, which include New Grub Street, Born in Exile , The Odd Women , In the Year of Jubilee , and The Whirlpool . The middle years of the decade saw his reputation reach new heights: some critics count him alongside George Meredith and Thomas Hardy, the best novelists of his day. He also enjoyed new friendships with fellow writers such as Henry James, and H.G. Wells, and came into contact with many other up-and-coming writers such as Joseph Conrad and Stephen Crane.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
December 27, 2021
Miss Lord Of Camberwell
"Miss Lord of Camberwel" was Gissing's original title for this 1894 novel until his publisher persuaded him to use "In the Year of Jubilee" instead. George Gissing (1857 -- 1903) was a late Victorian novelist who remains relatively unknown. Among other things, his book are distinguished for their attempts at realism and for their pessimism. I have continued to read and to love Gissing's books over the years. "The Year of Jubilee" is part of what most readers find Gissing's most productive period of writing.
Jacob Korg, a noted Gissing scholar, has well-described the novel as "a sprawling story about marriage problems and the corruption of values in industrial society". The book begins in 1887, with the Jubilee Day for Queen Victoria as its initial focus. Masses of people turn out to celebrate progress and democratization with, in Gissing's view, violence and vulgarization the near consequence. The story soon pivots, however, to the relationship between its two main characters, Nancy Lord and Lionel Tarrant.
Jubilee is an appropriate reference for the book's title, but Gissing's first thought had merit as well. Nancy Lord, 23, is the heroine of this novel, one of Gissing's many inspired women characters. She is a strong figure and strives for personal and sexual independence. Nancy Lord deserves better than what she receives in the book. Camberwell, the other component of Gissing's proposed title, is a London suburb, home in Gissing's day to a rising middle class including the Lord family. Nancy's father was a seller of pianos. His wife had apparently died early. Lord has tried to provide his children, Nancy and Horace, with a strong education and conventional upbringing. Both Nancy and Horace rebel in different ways and strike out for themselves.
Nancy has three suitors in the course of the book: Lionel Tarrant, an egotistical young man born to wealth who doesn't want to work or marry beneath himself, Luckworth Crewe, an ambitious man of the lower middle class who is working himself up to the main chance through the advertising business, and Samuel Barmby, Lord's business partner, who is pretentious, full of himself, and a fool. In a frank scene, for its day, Nancy has sex with Tarrant. She is not an innocent, but is instead both seductress and seduced. The couple then marry. Nancy's father dies leaving a will forbidding Nancy to marry until she reaches the age of 26 under pain of disinheritance. Nancy and Tarrant agree to try to conceal the marriage. Nancy is also pregnant.
Tarrant, a caddish figure, disappears to America for a year. Nancy grows in stature during this time, as she struggles to have her baby, find independence, and do some writing on her own. She remains faithful to Tarrant who is not faithful to her. Nancy is on the verge of throwing Tarrant over, but he returns and says he wants to pursue the marriage. The book settles unsatisfactorily with a near traditional wife's role for Nancy although at Tarrant's insistence both parties to the marriage are to have "space".
As so often with Gissing, the secondary characters are more interesting than the main story. Gissing is at his best when his passions are aroused, as is the case when he describes with disdain the rising lower middle class and its foibles. He describes numerous failed relationships and characters, including the French sisters, Fanny, Ada, and Beatrice. Nancy's brother is smitten with Fanny, who is a femme fatale. Ada is the shrewish wife of Arthur Peachey who eventually throws her over. Beatrice is a businesswoman who sells shoddy dresses to women who imagine themselves fashionable. The rising Luckworth Crewe does Beatrice's advertising and becomes her dominating business partner. Other important characters include Nancy's friend Jessica, who studies and has academic ambitions to no clear purpose, and a Mrs. Damerel, a mysterious character who presents herself as Nancy's and Horace's aunt.
"In the Year of Jubilee" is an ambiguous, highly mixed book that straddles Victorianism and modernism. Gissing as well seems to be of many minds about the situations he describes, about women in particular. His dislike for commercialism, advertising, the masses, and economic growth without wisdom remain clear. The book is marred by too many characters, lack of focus and probably by the figure of Lionel Tarrant who, in spite of some good qualities, remains highly dislikable and a poor reward for Nancy.
"The Year of Jubilee" deserves a modern edition. The last edition of "In the Year of Jubilee" was published in 1994 by "Everyman", with an excellent introduction by Paul Delany that may be found and read online. I was fortunate to find a reading copy of the first American edition of 1895, which was available for about the same price as the current offprint copies.
Robin Friedman
"Miss Lord of Camberwel" was Gissing's original title for this 1894 novel until his publisher persuaded him to use "In the Year of Jubilee" instead. George Gissing (1857 -- 1903) was a late Victorian novelist who remains relatively unknown. Among other things, his book are distinguished for their attempts at realism and for their pessimism. I have continued to read and to love Gissing's books over the years. "The Year of Jubilee" is part of what most readers find Gissing's most productive period of writing.
Jacob Korg, a noted Gissing scholar, has well-described the novel as "a sprawling story about marriage problems and the corruption of values in industrial society". The book begins in 1887, with the Jubilee Day for Queen Victoria as its initial focus. Masses of people turn out to celebrate progress and democratization with, in Gissing's view, violence and vulgarization the near consequence. The story soon pivots, however, to the relationship between its two main characters, Nancy Lord and Lionel Tarrant.
Jubilee is an appropriate reference for the book's title, but Gissing's first thought had merit as well. Nancy Lord, 23, is the heroine of this novel, one of Gissing's many inspired women characters. She is a strong figure and strives for personal and sexual independence. Nancy Lord deserves better than what she receives in the book. Camberwell, the other component of Gissing's proposed title, is a London suburb, home in Gissing's day to a rising middle class including the Lord family. Nancy's father was a seller of pianos. His wife had apparently died early. Lord has tried to provide his children, Nancy and Horace, with a strong education and conventional upbringing. Both Nancy and Horace rebel in different ways and strike out for themselves.
Nancy has three suitors in the course of the book: Lionel Tarrant, an egotistical young man born to wealth who doesn't want to work or marry beneath himself, Luckworth Crewe, an ambitious man of the lower middle class who is working himself up to the main chance through the advertising business, and Samuel Barmby, Lord's business partner, who is pretentious, full of himself, and a fool. In a frank scene, for its day, Nancy has sex with Tarrant. She is not an innocent, but is instead both seductress and seduced. The couple then marry. Nancy's father dies leaving a will forbidding Nancy to marry until she reaches the age of 26 under pain of disinheritance. Nancy and Tarrant agree to try to conceal the marriage. Nancy is also pregnant.
Tarrant, a caddish figure, disappears to America for a year. Nancy grows in stature during this time, as she struggles to have her baby, find independence, and do some writing on her own. She remains faithful to Tarrant who is not faithful to her. Nancy is on the verge of throwing Tarrant over, but he returns and says he wants to pursue the marriage. The book settles unsatisfactorily with a near traditional wife's role for Nancy although at Tarrant's insistence both parties to the marriage are to have "space".
As so often with Gissing, the secondary characters are more interesting than the main story. Gissing is at his best when his passions are aroused, as is the case when he describes with disdain the rising lower middle class and its foibles. He describes numerous failed relationships and characters, including the French sisters, Fanny, Ada, and Beatrice. Nancy's brother is smitten with Fanny, who is a femme fatale. Ada is the shrewish wife of Arthur Peachey who eventually throws her over. Beatrice is a businesswoman who sells shoddy dresses to women who imagine themselves fashionable. The rising Luckworth Crewe does Beatrice's advertising and becomes her dominating business partner. Other important characters include Nancy's friend Jessica, who studies and has academic ambitions to no clear purpose, and a Mrs. Damerel, a mysterious character who presents herself as Nancy's and Horace's aunt.
"In the Year of Jubilee" is an ambiguous, highly mixed book that straddles Victorianism and modernism. Gissing as well seems to be of many minds about the situations he describes, about women in particular. His dislike for commercialism, advertising, the masses, and economic growth without wisdom remain clear. The book is marred by too many characters, lack of focus and probably by the figure of Lionel Tarrant who, in spite of some good qualities, remains highly dislikable and a poor reward for Nancy.
"The Year of Jubilee" deserves a modern edition. The last edition of "In the Year of Jubilee" was published in 1994 by "Everyman", with an excellent introduction by Paul Delany that may be found and read online. I was fortunate to find a reading copy of the first American edition of 1895, which was available for about the same price as the current offprint copies.
Robin Friedman
January 22, 2020
In The Year Of The Jubilee is a novel by George Gissing written in 1894. The title refers to the Golden Jubilee in 1887, marking Queen Victoria’s 50th year on the throne. It has been said that this novel was written in Gissing’s best, strongest period. I really have no idea if that is true, I'll leave it to the experts, I do know however, that for me it's my least favorite Gissing novel of those I've read so far. Only part way into the book I was wondering if Gissing hated all women, certain women in particular, or simply hated marriage. By the end of the novel I was wondering if he hated just about everybody. I know as far as the characters in the book, by the end of the novel I pretty well hated everybody.
No one in this book who is married is happy. No one in this book who is married, or engaged, or only thinking of getting married is happy. The only people who may be happy are those who either never got married at all or who left their spouse. It doesn't seem to matter either whether you are rich or poor or middle-class, as long as you are married and living with your spouse your life will be miserable.
Our two main characters, the hero and heroine I suppose, are Nancy Lord and Lionel Tarrant who unfortunately for them, for us, and for everyone else, get married. They have a very different type of marriage from what I am used to. One in which Tarrant seduces Nancy, then to his credit I suppose, he does marry her, but is only too willing to keep the marriage secret. In fact once he finds out she is pregnant he leaves town; for the Bahamas supposedly to find a way of supporting Nancy and the child, but really to get away from his unwanted responsibilities. I hate this guy already and he hasn't even talked that much yet. His views on marriage, once he decides to reappear over a year later, drive me crazy.
But back to Nancy and her brother Horace. They have been raised by their father, their mother being dead. Mr. Lord is a piano dealer, and he has his children well educated, in fact Nancy considers herself "a highly educated young woman,--'cultured' was the word she would have used." Now Nancy is done with schooling and she "wished to live, and not merely to vegetate." It is this restless spirit of Nancy's that gets her in trouble.
Then there is Horace. Horace had been a disappointment to his father. In spite of his good education, Horace had disappointed his father who hoped that he would choose some professional career; he idled away his schooldays and ultimately had to be sent into 'business.' It was doubtful that Horace would do any better in business, he made little progress and only earned a small salary. Nancy is angry with her brother for his lack of energy and ambition, he could have helped have helped to establish her own social status at the level she desired if he would have established his own by his increased professional dignity. Horace falls in love with one of the three "French" sisters in the novel, Fanny French, a vulgar, low class, femme fatale. It doesn't matter what she does, or who she does it with, Horace stubbornly sticks to her eventually marrying her, and guess what, his life ends badly.
Fanny's sisters are Beatrice and Ada. Beatrice at least I could tolerate, she is a very good businesswoman selling cheaply made dresses to women who think they are fashionable. Beatrice doesn't seem to care what other people think, she gives Nancy a job even though her reputation is no longer pure, but it comes at a price, only after Nancy tells her the name of the man who seduced her and fathered her child will she give her employment. The other sister is unfortunately married and so her life is a disaster. Her poor husband is Arthur Peachey who only becomes happy after he finally leaves her.
I like Nancy for awhile. After Tarrant abandons her for the Bahamas and America she gets a job with Beatrice French instead of just sitting around crying for Tarrant. Then when he returns sending her a note telling her he is back instead of weeping with happiness and gratitude she sends him this note:
"'As your reward for marrying me is still a long way off, and as you tell me that you are in want, I send you as much as I can spare at present. Next month you shall hear from me again.'"
I loved that, it's something I would have done. However, by the end of the book she is meekly living where he wants her to, fulfilling his every wish. Later in the book this is part of their conversation:
'Friends are equals,' she said, after a little thought. 'But you don't think me your equal, and you won't be satisfied with me unless I follow your guidance.'
Tarrant laughed kindly.
'True, I am your superior in force of mind and force of body. Don't you like to hear that? Doesn't it do you good -- when you think of the maudlin humbug generally talked by men to women? We can't afford to disguise that truth. All the same, we are friends, because each has the other's interest at heart, and each would be ashamed to doubt the other's loyalty.'
Ugh, my reaction would have been much different than Nancy's was. As I write this my opinion of the book is actually rising, I was prepared when I closed the book to rate it one star, but now I'm up to three, it wasn't a badly written book, it just rubbed me the wrong way, but I don't think I'll be re-reading it anytime soon, there's only so much of Lionel Tarrant I could stand.
No one in this book who is married is happy. No one in this book who is married, or engaged, or only thinking of getting married is happy. The only people who may be happy are those who either never got married at all or who left their spouse. It doesn't seem to matter either whether you are rich or poor or middle-class, as long as you are married and living with your spouse your life will be miserable.
Our two main characters, the hero and heroine I suppose, are Nancy Lord and Lionel Tarrant who unfortunately for them, for us, and for everyone else, get married. They have a very different type of marriage from what I am used to. One in which Tarrant seduces Nancy, then to his credit I suppose, he does marry her, but is only too willing to keep the marriage secret. In fact once he finds out she is pregnant he leaves town; for the Bahamas supposedly to find a way of supporting Nancy and the child, but really to get away from his unwanted responsibilities. I hate this guy already and he hasn't even talked that much yet. His views on marriage, once he decides to reappear over a year later, drive me crazy.
But back to Nancy and her brother Horace. They have been raised by their father, their mother being dead. Mr. Lord is a piano dealer, and he has his children well educated, in fact Nancy considers herself "a highly educated young woman,--'cultured' was the word she would have used." Now Nancy is done with schooling and she "wished to live, and not merely to vegetate." It is this restless spirit of Nancy's that gets her in trouble.
Then there is Horace. Horace had been a disappointment to his father. In spite of his good education, Horace had disappointed his father who hoped that he would choose some professional career; he idled away his schooldays and ultimately had to be sent into 'business.' It was doubtful that Horace would do any better in business, he made little progress and only earned a small salary. Nancy is angry with her brother for his lack of energy and ambition, he could have helped have helped to establish her own social status at the level she desired if he would have established his own by his increased professional dignity. Horace falls in love with one of the three "French" sisters in the novel, Fanny French, a vulgar, low class, femme fatale. It doesn't matter what she does, or who she does it with, Horace stubbornly sticks to her eventually marrying her, and guess what, his life ends badly.
Fanny's sisters are Beatrice and Ada. Beatrice at least I could tolerate, she is a very good businesswoman selling cheaply made dresses to women who think they are fashionable. Beatrice doesn't seem to care what other people think, she gives Nancy a job even though her reputation is no longer pure, but it comes at a price, only after Nancy tells her the name of the man who seduced her and fathered her child will she give her employment. The other sister is unfortunately married and so her life is a disaster. Her poor husband is Arthur Peachey who only becomes happy after he finally leaves her.
I like Nancy for awhile. After Tarrant abandons her for the Bahamas and America she gets a job with Beatrice French instead of just sitting around crying for Tarrant. Then when he returns sending her a note telling her he is back instead of weeping with happiness and gratitude she sends him this note:
"'As your reward for marrying me is still a long way off, and as you tell me that you are in want, I send you as much as I can spare at present. Next month you shall hear from me again.'"
I loved that, it's something I would have done. However, by the end of the book she is meekly living where he wants her to, fulfilling his every wish. Later in the book this is part of their conversation:
'Friends are equals,' she said, after a little thought. 'But you don't think me your equal, and you won't be satisfied with me unless I follow your guidance.'
Tarrant laughed kindly.
'True, I am your superior in force of mind and force of body. Don't you like to hear that? Doesn't it do you good -- when you think of the maudlin humbug generally talked by men to women? We can't afford to disguise that truth. All the same, we are friends, because each has the other's interest at heart, and each would be ashamed to doubt the other's loyalty.'
Ugh, my reaction would have been much different than Nancy's was. As I write this my opinion of the book is actually rising, I was prepared when I closed the book to rate it one star, but now I'm up to three, it wasn't a badly written book, it just rubbed me the wrong way, but I don't think I'll be re-reading it anytime soon, there's only so much of Lionel Tarrant I could stand.
July 10, 2014
There was one plot point I saw from a mile away, but other than that, another entertaining novel by George Gissing.
May 14, 2024
2.5 stars.
October 31, 2023
Later Victorian novels can be so refreshingly bleak. Set in 1887, the year of Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, and in several years that follow, The Year of the Jubilee follows an interconnected set of middle class characters in London. Despite the urban setting, it’s small world reminiscent of Jane Austen’s quote about “three or four families in a country village,” but updated (or fallen) to a culture in which nearly everyone is “in trade,” every surface is covered with advertising, and young women are more impatient for personal freedom than for marriage. None of these changes, we are to understand, are positive developments. As a novel published in 1894, it’s definitely part of the “new woman” era, and though it mentions neither bicycles nor latchkeys, their impact lurks beneath the surface.
The book is more like The Woman Who Did (more than one woman character “does”) than Gissing’s own Odd Women. The Year of the Jubilee is nominally sympathetic to women’s feelings of being imprisoned by social convention but identifying far more, ultimately, with men trapped in marriages to inferior women. There are a LOT of inferior women in the book: crass, brash, slovenly, slatternly, and generally “ill bred.” One male character opines, “Wherever you look now-a-days, there’s sham and rottenness; but the most worthless creature living is one of these trashy, flashy girls,--the kind of girl you see everywhere, high and low,--calling themselves ‘ladies,’—thinking themselves too good for any honest, womanly work.” One young woman suffers a psychological breakdown studying to enter university (believe me, I get that education can be a source of stress, but not just because one is female). The worst women desert their small children—and considering the proportion of female characters in this novel who abandon children, you’d think it was a quarter of the entire British population!
To be sure, there are also plenty of crass and ignorant men in the book, each of them arrogantly sure he knows all there is to know, and Gissing has a good time mocking their pretensions. One of the most ignorant and arrogant holds forth on the Jubilee as a symbol of fifty years of progress, which, clearly, Gissing considers laughably mistaken. To Gissing, the most apt symbol of England in the year of the Jubilee is a railway platform: “in hurrying crowds, in black fumes that poisoned the palate with sulphur. . . . High and low, on every available yard of wall, advertisements clamoured to the eye: theatres, journals, soaps, medicines, concerts, furniture, wines, prayer -meetings—all the produces and refuse of civilisation announced in staring letters, in daubed effigies, base, paltry, grotesque. A battle-ground of advertisements, fitly chosen amid subterranean din and reek; a symbol to the gaze of that relentless warfare which ceases not, night and day, in the world above.” Appropriately, the character who best typifies late-Victorian England is Mr. Luckworth Crewe, who is moving up in the world on the strength of his skill selling advertisements; his goal is to “develop” a beautiful seaside town by, in part, covering every inch of natural scenery with ads.
I had fun reading this book, despite its deep sexism, or maybe partly because it is so quaintly piggish. The characters are distinctive and well drawn; the plot kept me interested; the satire is sharp. Not my favorite Victorian novel or even my favorite Gissing, but a good read.
The book is more like The Woman Who Did (more than one woman character “does”) than Gissing’s own Odd Women. The Year of the Jubilee is nominally sympathetic to women’s feelings of being imprisoned by social convention but identifying far more, ultimately, with men trapped in marriages to inferior women. There are a LOT of inferior women in the book: crass, brash, slovenly, slatternly, and generally “ill bred.” One male character opines, “Wherever you look now-a-days, there’s sham and rottenness; but the most worthless creature living is one of these trashy, flashy girls,--the kind of girl you see everywhere, high and low,--calling themselves ‘ladies,’—thinking themselves too good for any honest, womanly work.” One young woman suffers a psychological breakdown studying to enter university (believe me, I get that education can be a source of stress, but not just because one is female). The worst women desert their small children—and considering the proportion of female characters in this novel who abandon children, you’d think it was a quarter of the entire British population!
To be sure, there are also plenty of crass and ignorant men in the book, each of them arrogantly sure he knows all there is to know, and Gissing has a good time mocking their pretensions. One of the most ignorant and arrogant holds forth on the Jubilee as a symbol of fifty years of progress, which, clearly, Gissing considers laughably mistaken. To Gissing, the most apt symbol of England in the year of the Jubilee is a railway platform: “in hurrying crowds, in black fumes that poisoned the palate with sulphur. . . . High and low, on every available yard of wall, advertisements clamoured to the eye: theatres, journals, soaps, medicines, concerts, furniture, wines, prayer -meetings—all the produces and refuse of civilisation announced in staring letters, in daubed effigies, base, paltry, grotesque. A battle-ground of advertisements, fitly chosen amid subterranean din and reek; a symbol to the gaze of that relentless warfare which ceases not, night and day, in the world above.” Appropriately, the character who best typifies late-Victorian England is Mr. Luckworth Crewe, who is moving up in the world on the strength of his skill selling advertisements; his goal is to “develop” a beautiful seaside town by, in part, covering every inch of natural scenery with ads.
I had fun reading this book, despite its deep sexism, or maybe partly because it is so quaintly piggish. The characters are distinctive and well drawn; the plot kept me interested; the satire is sharp. Not my favorite Victorian novel or even my favorite Gissing, but a good read.
February 5, 2024
‘Jubilee,’ in addition to its fine portraits of memorable men and women, deals with three strands of plot which may be separated into the social (class), the intellectual (education) and gender (feminism, equality). It is one of Gissing's most bitter criticisms of progress without the backbone of values born of education and principles. Finally, as an exercise in misogamy, it stands peerless.
That education is the leveller between the classes, Gissing leaves us in no doubt: else how could a slovenly, slatternly woman like Mrs Peachey afford a nursery maid, a kind of housemaid and a cook, who are as well or as ill-educated as she herself? "I can’t see much difference between her and the servant girls," says the Pasha, when his daughter appeals to him to let her attend the Jubilee day celebrations in the evening, and a few minutes later the housekeeper brings in an identical request from the kitchen maids. The only difference between them is that the daughter gets an hour's extra grace time to stay out.
Jubilee Day itself, designed to celebrate Victoria's fiftieth year on the throne, serves rather to highlight how human ideals have been degraded and vulgarised, while mechanical and scientific progress have certainly made unprecedented advances. Were the past fifty years worth the celebrations of the day? Not if the drunken, roistering crowds are anything to go by.
Mrs Peachey's sister Beatrice, more intelligent than she, and certainly more malevolent, is the one woman in the book to strike out for herself, pandering to the tastes of the poor and ignorant aspiring to a class to which they can never belong. Take the case of Nancy Lord, a girl who believes herself superior to others of her acquaintance, but who in fact went to school with the flighty Fanny French, the youngest of Mrs Peachey’s sisters: Nancy believes herself not simply to have been educated, but to be cultured, when in fact, “Her education had been chiefly concerned with names.” Thus, to impress an arrant rascal, she picks up a volume of the German scientist Helmholtz's work, but has never read a line of Keats’s poetry: an omission that is to cost her dearly. Nancy, for all her superior airs, when push finally comes to shove, takes a job as a glorified shop assistant in the chain of shops run by Beatrice French. Her literary ambitions are quashed by her husband, who while admitting that her manuscript is “good”, advises her against submitting it to a publisher because “it isn't literature.”
Or, since it's the women whose education Gissing seems to be excoriating, take the case of Jessica Morgan, whose studies towards a bachelor's degree drive her to the brink of madness: surely there were other women candidates for the same exam whose brains didn't collapse quite so dramatically? Yet, of all the educated women, Jessica turns out to be the least refined, the least sensitive, and the most vindictive. There are two other women, direct opposites to each other and yet whose lives have strangely impinged on each other: the mysterious Mrs Damerel and Mary Woodruff, the housekeeper and devoted and utterly rock-loyal friend to her employers the Lords, and Stephen Lord in particular. Mary Woodruff is not educated as Nancy Lord is, but she has a strong foundation of common sense and no fear of hard physical labour, though she must be at least fifteen years older than Nancy. And in Gissing's eyes, and thus in the eyes of men in the book, it is she who is the ideal of feminine perfection (other than her lack of a child.)
But to be fair to Gissing, it is not the women he despises, it is the kind of brutalisation that runs hand in hand with railways, ideas of scientific progress, and general gimcrackery, exemplified by a “liberal education” and by Luckworth Crewe’s sadly prophetic visions of a future where nature is blotted out by hoardings. Luckworth Crewe stands in direct contrast to Lionel Tarrant, the so-called landed gentleman, and to a lesser degree, to Samuel Barmby, the pompous equal of Nancy and Horace Lord in “social rank, only just above that of wage-earners.” Luckworth Crewe’s greatest virtue is in his total lack of self-deceit: or to put it another way, his absolute honesty, even when he is deceiving the public. All three men are attracted to Nancy Lord, it matters not why. Of the three, she picks on the one man who, despite his superior education and natural grace (he can quote Greek and Latin, sports the oak for privacy, and as long as he has a dress suit, is ready to face the world), has the weakest moral fibre and courage. Perhaps, of all the men who figure in the book, it is Horace Lord who should command our respect the most. It is he who finally finds the courage to stand up to his father in direct confrontation; who defies his apparently wealthy aunt; who breaks his heart over an unworthy woman, and later, overcome by ill health, marries that same woman, but is unable to drag her back from the degradation she seems to enjoy. And dies with absolutely nothing to reproach himself.
That finally brings us to the institution of marriage. Gissing's personal experiences on the subject cannot be written out. Although only the marriage of the Tarrants is dealt with in detail, it leaves one with a very odd idea of the married state. Are we to believe that living apart and maintaining two households is the best way to achieving marital bliss? It certainly does not paint Tarrant in any agreeable light. To the end, he insists on his personal freedom and right to live apart - and be unfaithful if he chose, though that same freedom is denied to his wife: the suppression of her manuscript, her removal from her place of employment, her right to be ‘free.’ Asked point blank if he is ashamed of his wife (he is), he denies it. Eventually, Nancy’s strength of character is sure to bring this marriage at least to safe harbour, unlike that of the weak Mr Peachey or Horace Lord. Beatrice French is sure to get her man, Luckworth Crewe, though with Crewe’s views on the subject: “Let women be as independent as they like as long as they’re not married. I never think the worse of them, whatever they do that’s honest. But a wife must play second fiddle, and think her husband a small god almighty!” it is a toss-up as to who will murder the other first!
That education is the leveller between the classes, Gissing leaves us in no doubt: else how could a slovenly, slatternly woman like Mrs Peachey afford a nursery maid, a kind of housemaid and a cook, who are as well or as ill-educated as she herself? "I can’t see much difference between her and the servant girls," says the Pasha, when his daughter appeals to him to let her attend the Jubilee day celebrations in the evening, and a few minutes later the housekeeper brings in an identical request from the kitchen maids. The only difference between them is that the daughter gets an hour's extra grace time to stay out.
Jubilee Day itself, designed to celebrate Victoria's fiftieth year on the throne, serves rather to highlight how human ideals have been degraded and vulgarised, while mechanical and scientific progress have certainly made unprecedented advances. Were the past fifty years worth the celebrations of the day? Not if the drunken, roistering crowds are anything to go by.
Mrs Peachey's sister Beatrice, more intelligent than she, and certainly more malevolent, is the one woman in the book to strike out for herself, pandering to the tastes of the poor and ignorant aspiring to a class to which they can never belong. Take the case of Nancy Lord, a girl who believes herself superior to others of her acquaintance, but who in fact went to school with the flighty Fanny French, the youngest of Mrs Peachey’s sisters: Nancy believes herself not simply to have been educated, but to be cultured, when in fact, “Her education had been chiefly concerned with names.” Thus, to impress an arrant rascal, she picks up a volume of the German scientist Helmholtz's work, but has never read a line of Keats’s poetry: an omission that is to cost her dearly. Nancy, for all her superior airs, when push finally comes to shove, takes a job as a glorified shop assistant in the chain of shops run by Beatrice French. Her literary ambitions are quashed by her husband, who while admitting that her manuscript is “good”, advises her against submitting it to a publisher because “it isn't literature.”
Or, since it's the women whose education Gissing seems to be excoriating, take the case of Jessica Morgan, whose studies towards a bachelor's degree drive her to the brink of madness: surely there were other women candidates for the same exam whose brains didn't collapse quite so dramatically? Yet, of all the educated women, Jessica turns out to be the least refined, the least sensitive, and the most vindictive. There are two other women, direct opposites to each other and yet whose lives have strangely impinged on each other: the mysterious Mrs Damerel and Mary Woodruff, the housekeeper and devoted and utterly rock-loyal friend to her employers the Lords, and Stephen Lord in particular. Mary Woodruff is not educated as Nancy Lord is, but she has a strong foundation of common sense and no fear of hard physical labour, though she must be at least fifteen years older than Nancy. And in Gissing's eyes, and thus in the eyes of men in the book, it is she who is the ideal of feminine perfection (other than her lack of a child.)
But to be fair to Gissing, it is not the women he despises, it is the kind of brutalisation that runs hand in hand with railways, ideas of scientific progress, and general gimcrackery, exemplified by a “liberal education” and by Luckworth Crewe’s sadly prophetic visions of a future where nature is blotted out by hoardings. Luckworth Crewe stands in direct contrast to Lionel Tarrant, the so-called landed gentleman, and to a lesser degree, to Samuel Barmby, the pompous equal of Nancy and Horace Lord in “social rank, only just above that of wage-earners.” Luckworth Crewe’s greatest virtue is in his total lack of self-deceit: or to put it another way, his absolute honesty, even when he is deceiving the public. All three men are attracted to Nancy Lord, it matters not why. Of the three, she picks on the one man who, despite his superior education and natural grace (he can quote Greek and Latin, sports the oak for privacy, and as long as he has a dress suit, is ready to face the world), has the weakest moral fibre and courage. Perhaps, of all the men who figure in the book, it is Horace Lord who should command our respect the most. It is he who finally finds the courage to stand up to his father in direct confrontation; who defies his apparently wealthy aunt; who breaks his heart over an unworthy woman, and later, overcome by ill health, marries that same woman, but is unable to drag her back from the degradation she seems to enjoy. And dies with absolutely nothing to reproach himself.
That finally brings us to the institution of marriage. Gissing's personal experiences on the subject cannot be written out. Although only the marriage of the Tarrants is dealt with in detail, it leaves one with a very odd idea of the married state. Are we to believe that living apart and maintaining two households is the best way to achieving marital bliss? It certainly does not paint Tarrant in any agreeable light. To the end, he insists on his personal freedom and right to live apart - and be unfaithful if he chose, though that same freedom is denied to his wife: the suppression of her manuscript, her removal from her place of employment, her right to be ‘free.’ Asked point blank if he is ashamed of his wife (he is), he denies it. Eventually, Nancy’s strength of character is sure to bring this marriage at least to safe harbour, unlike that of the weak Mr Peachey or Horace Lord. Beatrice French is sure to get her man, Luckworth Crewe, though with Crewe’s views on the subject: “Let women be as independent as they like as long as they’re not married. I never think the worse of them, whatever they do that’s honest. But a wife must play second fiddle, and think her husband a small god almighty!” it is a toss-up as to who will murder the other first!
December 4, 2021
Having enjoyed the writing of Gissing in the past I was bowled over to see a Gissing classic I had not already read! What a find. Each page captures the interest of the reader immediately. The characters are so well written and the first few pages are an amazing approach to scene construction. The less likeable characters make their appearance first and one mayn't realize the difference at first. Other characters who are at first likeable may not be later and the reverse happens as well. Just a wonderful period piece with carefulness in detail and astonishingly realistic mental pictures which go along with the descriptions of surroundings as well as dress and even to facial expressions. Remarkably told.
January 23, 2018
A really good early work. Gissing presents his story in an England where the middle class is indifferent to the monarch's anniversary, the working class use it merely as an excuse to get drunk and the police stewarding of the crowds is an opportunity for gratuitous violence. As England stands on the bring of quitting civilization and we are threatened by another royal marriage and, doubtless, more royal babies, this is a salutary read.
May 12, 2021
Now there's a twist: lots of books about couples living together without getting married, but here's one about a couple who get married without living together!
Shelved as 'fic-guided'
July 24, 2020Orwell, a staunch admirer, recommends Gissing thus:
Everything of Gissing’s – except perhaps one or two books written towards the end of his life – contains memorable passages, and anyone who is making his acquaintance for the first time might do worse than start with In the Year of Jubilee.
It is Gissing’s wholly disillusioned, but curiously insatiable, relish for metropolitan ‘sordidness’, Orwell observes, that distinguishes this work. Gissing fingers filth like a jeweller fingering gems. The year in the title is 1887 and the jubilee in question is that commemorating Queen and Empress Victoria’s ‘golden’ half-century on the throne. Victoria’s was effectively the first such celebration. There has been one since which has not yet, as far as I know, been commemorated in fiction. Gissing casts a typically jaundiced eye on the junket. This was also the year of the ‘Bloody Sunday’ riot – by angry socialists and ‘radicals’ – on 13 November in Trafalgar Square (an event which ‘fabianised’ George Bernard Shaw), during which 2,000 police and 400 troops laid into the 10,000 protestors with truncheons, fists and boots. The 1880s were a period of depression – particularly in the countryside (something which cast a pall of gloom over Thomas Hardy’s early fiction). Victoria’s big day was nevertheless celebrated with a national holiday on 21 June – a blazing hot day. The crowds in London were unprecedentedly huge. Gissing’s description reminds one of that of Eliot, surveying the morning crowd on London Bridge in The Waste Land, with the Dantean comment, ‘I had not thought death had undone so many’:
Along the main thoroughfares of mid-London, wheel-traffic was now suspended; between the houses moved a double current of humanity, this way and that, filling the whole space, so that no vehicle could possibly have made its way on the wonted track. At junctions, pickets of police directed progress; the slowly advancing masses wheeled to left or right at word of command, carelessly obedient. But for an occasional bellow of hilarious blackguardism, or for a song uplifted by strident voices, or a cheer at some flaring symbol that pleased the passers, there was little noise; only a thud, thud of footfalls numberless, and the low, unvarying sound that suggested some huge beast purring to itself in stupid contentment.
The jubilee, as the title promises, is central to the novel. Multiple plotlines are constructed around two neighbouring families, the Lords and the Frenches, in Camberwell. Gissing had recently taken up residence in South London and was fascinated by its petit bourgeois horrors. The head of the Lord family deals in upright pianos. There are two children: Horace, a wastrel and Nancy, a vulgar flirt who has, nonetheless, ‘something worthwhile’ in her. There is some mystery about the absent Mrs Lord. The members of the French family in whom the novel interests itself are three correspondingly vulgar young women, possessed of a small inheritance from their builder father. The multiple wooings, marriages and ensuing complications (involving losses of virginity, secret marriages, and infinite manoeuvring for small inheritances) constitute the plot. Nancy Lord emerges as the principal character; Gissing’s first thought was to call the novel ‘Miss Lord of Camberwell’. She is eventually ‘saved’ and transported to a happier life in genteel Harrow.
The novel is principally a vehicle for Gissing’s inveterate satire against the semi-educated (but inexorably ‘rising’) lower-middle classes; their awful reading matter and even more awful ‘popular’ music (much of it described and cited, scornfully, in the novel); and, above all, advertising. ‘How’, the novel sarcastically enquires,
could we have become what we are without the modern science and art of advertising? Till advertising sprang up, the world was barbarous. Do you suppose people kept themselves clean before they were reminded at every corner of the benefits of soap? Do you suppose they were healthy before every wall and hoarding told them what medicine to take for their ailments? Not they indeed!
Gissing did not rejoice at a future dominated by ‘Camberwell Man’, carbolically clean as his armpits might be.
Everything of Gissing’s – except perhaps one or two books written towards the end of his life – contains memorable passages, and anyone who is making his acquaintance for the first time might do worse than start with In the Year of Jubilee.
It is Gissing’s wholly disillusioned, but curiously insatiable, relish for metropolitan ‘sordidness’, Orwell observes, that distinguishes this work. Gissing fingers filth like a jeweller fingering gems. The year in the title is 1887 and the jubilee in question is that commemorating Queen and Empress Victoria’s ‘golden’ half-century on the throne. Victoria’s was effectively the first such celebration. There has been one since which has not yet, as far as I know, been commemorated in fiction. Gissing casts a typically jaundiced eye on the junket. This was also the year of the ‘Bloody Sunday’ riot – by angry socialists and ‘radicals’ – on 13 November in Trafalgar Square (an event which ‘fabianised’ George Bernard Shaw), during which 2,000 police and 400 troops laid into the 10,000 protestors with truncheons, fists and boots. The 1880s were a period of depression – particularly in the countryside (something which cast a pall of gloom over Thomas Hardy’s early fiction). Victoria’s big day was nevertheless celebrated with a national holiday on 21 June – a blazing hot day. The crowds in London were unprecedentedly huge. Gissing’s description reminds one of that of Eliot, surveying the morning crowd on London Bridge in The Waste Land, with the Dantean comment, ‘I had not thought death had undone so many’:
Along the main thoroughfares of mid-London, wheel-traffic was now suspended; between the houses moved a double current of humanity, this way and that, filling the whole space, so that no vehicle could possibly have made its way on the wonted track. At junctions, pickets of police directed progress; the slowly advancing masses wheeled to left or right at word of command, carelessly obedient. But for an occasional bellow of hilarious blackguardism, or for a song uplifted by strident voices, or a cheer at some flaring symbol that pleased the passers, there was little noise; only a thud, thud of footfalls numberless, and the low, unvarying sound that suggested some huge beast purring to itself in stupid contentment.
The jubilee, as the title promises, is central to the novel. Multiple plotlines are constructed around two neighbouring families, the Lords and the Frenches, in Camberwell. Gissing had recently taken up residence in South London and was fascinated by its petit bourgeois horrors. The head of the Lord family deals in upright pianos. There are two children: Horace, a wastrel and Nancy, a vulgar flirt who has, nonetheless, ‘something worthwhile’ in her. There is some mystery about the absent Mrs Lord. The members of the French family in whom the novel interests itself are three correspondingly vulgar young women, possessed of a small inheritance from their builder father. The multiple wooings, marriages and ensuing complications (involving losses of virginity, secret marriages, and infinite manoeuvring for small inheritances) constitute the plot. Nancy Lord emerges as the principal character; Gissing’s first thought was to call the novel ‘Miss Lord of Camberwell’. She is eventually ‘saved’ and transported to a happier life in genteel Harrow.
The novel is principally a vehicle for Gissing’s inveterate satire against the semi-educated (but inexorably ‘rising’) lower-middle classes; their awful reading matter and even more awful ‘popular’ music (much of it described and cited, scornfully, in the novel); and, above all, advertising. ‘How’, the novel sarcastically enquires,
could we have become what we are without the modern science and art of advertising? Till advertising sprang up, the world was barbarous. Do you suppose people kept themselves clean before they were reminded at every corner of the benefits of soap? Do you suppose they were healthy before every wall and hoarding told them what medicine to take for their ailments? Not they indeed!
Gissing did not rejoice at a future dominated by ‘Camberwell Man’, carbolically clean as his armpits might be.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 2, 2024
A fine portrait of late nineteenth century characters - inhabitants of London at the time of the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. This time Gissing turns his attention to middle class society and delivers his characteristically well observed personalities.
Change is afoot in English society and indeed more widely so. Once again, Gissing refers to the ground breaking work of Charles Darwin and the affects this is having on the minds of people. He also writes of the mingling of the classes which somehow seems to be facilitated amidst the liberalising movement of the Zeitgeist.
Much literature of the Victorian period includes reference to health and the general vulnerability of the populace. In our modern and well medicated world of today, it is well that we are reminded that things were not always so rosy and that people once lived in constant fear for their lives. Gissing is no exception in giving voice to this, illness and mortality being a recurring topic in his work. But being a prescient author, he is often looking forward and predicting advancement in many areas.
One of Gissing`s strengths is his perception, but also his ability to describe through narrative, the complexity surrounding the relationships between the sexes. He is remarkable in his discourse on women in particular and the female characters who populate this novel provide rich material for the author to examine.
Change is afoot in English society and indeed more widely so. Once again, Gissing refers to the ground breaking work of Charles Darwin and the affects this is having on the minds of people. He also writes of the mingling of the classes which somehow seems to be facilitated amidst the liberalising movement of the Zeitgeist.
Much literature of the Victorian period includes reference to health and the general vulnerability of the populace. In our modern and well medicated world of today, it is well that we are reminded that things were not always so rosy and that people once lived in constant fear for their lives. Gissing is no exception in giving voice to this, illness and mortality being a recurring topic in his work. But being a prescient author, he is often looking forward and predicting advancement in many areas.
One of Gissing`s strengths is his perception, but also his ability to describe through narrative, the complexity surrounding the relationships between the sexes. He is remarkable in his discourse on women in particular and the female characters who populate this novel provide rich material for the author to examine.
February 9, 2020
My introduction to Gissing. Quite good.
November 23, 2010
1887, the 'year of Jubilee": fiftieth anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, occasion for celebrating the unprecedented "Progress of the Human Race," and title of this novel. The world had changed in fifty years; the trouble was that not all of its changes were for the best. In the midst of the rejoicing, the author saw reasons aplenty for regret, and the novel unfolds a grim drama of greed, vulgarity, self-complacent bigotry, gnawing penury and despair.
At the center of this bitterly ironic story are the tempestuous love affair and afflicted marriage of Nancy Lord and Lionel Tarrant. At it's conclusion, the pair are defeated, broken in spirit by oppressive Victorian mores. And around the wreckage of this ill-fated union are strewn the shattered hopes and dreams of the queen's other subjects, among them the sick, the ignorant, the blindly ambitious, the deceived and their deceivers. Incredibly, above all are heard the jubilant voices of the proclaimers of the triumph of "progress."
~~from the back cover
It just wasn't a very nice book. Mr. Gissing may be an excellent author, but as it was written in 1894, the language was a bit difficult and certainly the prevailing ideas and the stratification of society were unpleasant, at least as presented by Mr. Gissing. His views of society are as unfavorable as Dickens' were, but presented without the benefit of Dickens' lyrical pen and deft characterizations.
At the center of this bitterly ironic story are the tempestuous love affair and afflicted marriage of Nancy Lord and Lionel Tarrant. At it's conclusion, the pair are defeated, broken in spirit by oppressive Victorian mores. And around the wreckage of this ill-fated union are strewn the shattered hopes and dreams of the queen's other subjects, among them the sick, the ignorant, the blindly ambitious, the deceived and their deceivers. Incredibly, above all are heard the jubilant voices of the proclaimers of the triumph of "progress."
~~from the back cover
It just wasn't a very nice book. Mr. Gissing may be an excellent author, but as it was written in 1894, the language was a bit difficult and certainly the prevailing ideas and the stratification of society were unpleasant, at least as presented by Mr. Gissing. His views of society are as unfavorable as Dickens' were, but presented without the benefit of Dickens' lyrical pen and deft characterizations.
October 29, 2015
Unless you like books about loveless marriages and women getting the spirit patriachy'd right out of them, I'd avoid it. The last chapter is basically Tarrant mansplaining to Nancy why she should be a meek subservient housewife and, because it's written by a man, she just smiles at her lost independence "without bitterness". I know it's not exactly a modern novel, but I mean, look at this:
"She looked up, and commanded her features to the expression which makes whatever woman lovely -- that of rational acquiescence. On the faces of most women such look is never seen." (p. 375)
Oh my God.
The rest of the book, when it's not about how women all suck, is about how all people suck all the time. Nobody is really likeable, and while I'm sure that may even be his point, it makes for a frustrating read.
The stuff about advertising and marketing at the time, though - that's interesting. To see the beginnings of our modern consumer culture is, well, neat. Too bad it takes up maybe 20 pages of this 400-page monster.
"She looked up, and commanded her features to the expression which makes whatever woman lovely -- that of rational acquiescence. On the faces of most women such look is never seen." (p. 375)
Oh my God.
The rest of the book, when it's not about how women all suck, is about how all people suck all the time. Nobody is really likeable, and while I'm sure that may even be his point, it makes for a frustrating read.
The stuff about advertising and marketing at the time, though - that's interesting. To see the beginnings of our modern consumer culture is, well, neat. Too bad it takes up maybe 20 pages of this 400-page monster.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 7, 2013
Really enjoyed this; I love the female characters (except maybe for Ada) even if the ending was slightly disappointing.
November 23, 2013
Unsatisfactory ending
November 3, 2016
Progressive women, first advertising man in Literature, great characterizations and interesting plots. A bit hard to read in the old fashion way it's written but worth it.
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