New Grub Street

When the fitting moment arrived, Alfred Yule underwent an operation for cataract, and it was believed at first that the result would be favourable. This hope had but short duration; though the utmost prudence was exercised, evil symptoms declared themselves, and in a few months’ time all prospect of restoring his vision was at an end.

Jasper's ascent, Reardon's collapse, Amy's desertion, and Marian's ruined inheritance fuse into a marketplace tragedy with classical irony; the cataract ending locks the moral ledger, so plot scores 90.

Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetising.

Jasper, Reardon, Amy, Marian, and Yule are individuated by their relation to the market — adaptive journalist against failing novelist — without flattening into allegory only, so cast scores 89.

It was natural that Amy should hint dissatisfaction with the loneliness in which her days were mostly spent. She had never lived in a large circle of acquaintances; the narrowness of her mother’s means restricted the family to intercourse with a few old friends and such new ones as were content with teacup entertainment.

Thirty-seven chapters of lodging and editorial grind; Reardon's crisis and Marian's inheritance accelerate, but teacup and review-room dilations slow the middle to social realism rather than thriller tempo, so pace scores 84.

I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes. We are not geniuses, and if we sit down in a spirit of long-eared gravity we shall produce only commonplace stuff. Let us use our wits to earn money, and make the best we can of our lives.

Cool anatomizing prose — Jasper's creed, Reardon's depleted mornings — exact about how books are sold without Dickensian flourish, so prose scores 91.

He had no longer to fear the effects upon Amy of such a grievous change as from their homelike flat to the couple of rooms he had taken in Islington; for the moment, this relief helped him to bear the pain of all that had happened and the uneasiness which troubled him when he reflected that his wife was henceforth a charge to her mother.

Homelike flat against Islington rooms, Museum labour against editorial dinners — London letters mapped as a cash geography of rooms and ranks, so world scores 88.

Jasper, listening before he cracked an egg, remarked with cheerfulness: ‘There’s a man being hanged in London at this moment.’ ‘Surely it isn’t necessary to let us know that,’ said his sister Maud, coldly.

Cheerful professionalism meeting a Newgate hanging establishes Gissing's cold social eye before the trade plot begins — inviting in tone rather than shock alone, so hook scores 88.

Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman.

Literature as trade declared without romance — a systematic study of the literary marketplace that anticipates media sociology of authorship, so innov scores 92.

‘Yes, for rich people. How I pity the poor devils!—Play anything. Better still if you will sing, my nightingale!’ So Amy first played and then sang, and Jasper lay back in dreamy bliss.

Yule blinded, Marian caretaker-poor, Jasper and Amy sealed in 'blessedness' — ironic rewards that name the market's winners without moral comfort, so ending scores 87.