SOURCE: A review of A Victim of Circumstances, in The Dial, Vol. LXXXIII, December, 1927, pp. 512-14.

In the following review, Aiken discusses Gissing's later works.

To this collection of short stories by George Gissing, “never before issued in book form,” Mr Alfred Gissing contributes a preface, which is largely a discussion of “realism” in fiction; and in this preface Mr Gissing moves, a little naïvely, to the conclusion that the author of the Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft was something more, or better, than a mere realist, because his stories contained a “moral,” or here and there pointed to a “higher truth.” At this date, it seems a little odd to encounter a critic who is still worrying about the defence of the “ugly” in art, and who finds it necessary to discover a moral or social—if not aesthetic!—justification for such a portrait as that...