The Crisis of Liberati in George Gissing’s New Grub Street

Abstract

George Gissing is a famous essayist and novelist in the late Victorian era. His masterpiece New Grub Street reveals the negative impact of literary marketization on literature and even culture by describing the different living conditions of literati. The novel depicts three different types of literati images, namely idealists who adhere to artistic standards, utilitarians who cater to the market, and female writers who are on the edge of literature, thus reflecting the writer's critical attitude towards the social reality that literature has become a commodity.