Description
1887, the "year of Jubilee": fiftieth anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, occasion for celebrating the unprecedented "Progress of the Human Race," and title of a major novel by George Gissing. The world had changed in fifty years, the trouble was that not all of its changes were for the best. In the midst of the rejoicing, Gissing saw reasons aplenty for regret, and his novel unfolds a grim drama of greed, vulgarity, self-complacent bigotry, gnawing penury and despair.
At the center of this bitterly ironic story are the tempestuous love affair and afflicted marriage of Nancy Lord and Lionel Tarrant. At its conclusion, the pair are defeated, broken in spirit by oppressive Victorian mores. And around the wreckage of this ill- fated union are strewn the shattered hopes and dreams of the queen's other subjects, among them the sick, the ignorant, the blindly ambitious, the deceived and their deceivers. Incredibly, above all are heard the jubilant voices of the proclaimers of the triumph of "progress."
ISBN:048624251X
