SOURCE: An introduction to The House of Cobwebs, in Gissing: The Critical Heritage, edited by Pierre Coustillas and Colin Partridge, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972, pp. 509-17.

In the following excerpt, which was originally published as the introduction to the 1906 edition of The House of Cobwebs, Seccombe surveys the distinctive qualities of Gissing's fiction and places him in context with other nineteenth-century English authors.

In England during the sixties and seventies of last century the world of books was dominated by one Gargantuan type of fiction. The terms book and novel became almost synonymous in houses which were not Puritan, yet where books and reading, in the era of few and unfree libraries, were strictly circumscribed. George Gissing was no exception to this rule. The English novel was at the summit of its reputation during his boyish days. As a lad of eight or nine he remembered the parts of...