Kate's Reviews > In the year of jubilee

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.