The Unclassed: The 1884 Text (E L S Monograph Series)

Eleven years after it was first published in 1884, George Gissing spoke of The Unclassed as "the work of a very young man, who dealt in a romantic spirit with the gloomier facts of life." When it was first published in 1884, it drew criticism from all quarters. When Gissing later revised the book, he felt ashamed of his youthful enthusiasms; he may have turned The Unclassed into a more accomplished novel, but also a less interesting one. The present edition makes the original text available for the first time since the four hundred copies printed in 1884. Only this text does justice to all four aspects of the novel: the romance, the realist experiment, the sociological tract, and the autobiographical testament.