George Robert Gissing, one of the finest English novelists of the later nineteenth century, was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1857, the eldest of five children. His father, a chemist and amateur botanist, died when he was thirteen, a loss that affected him profoundly. Gissing and his two brothers were educated at Alderley Edge, Cheshire. A studious boy, Gissing excelled academically, winning prizes and acquiring a love of the classics that subsequently informed his fiction. In 1872 he won a scholarship to Owens College, Manchester (now Manchester University). All seemed set for a successful career when a calamity occurred that shattered his life. On May 31 1876 he was apprehended stealing from the college cloakroom. Within a week he …
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