The Town Traveller

A commercial traveller in cheap London lodgings, a landlady, a barmaid, a missing husband and a legacy — Gissing writing comedy, on purpose, because his publisher asked for something that would sell. His academic career ended at eighteen when he was caught stealing to support a young prostitute he married; this 1898 novel is the one time he tried to be Dickens, and Mr Gammon is genuinely good company. Fifty-nine plates from 1803 to 1928, by painters including William Rothenstein and Ilya Repin, range across interiors, landscapes and public ceremonies — the crowded, many-roomed world Gissing's lodgers move through.