Will Warburton

A gentleman loses his money in a sugar-broking failure, tells nobody, and secretly opens a grocer's shop in Fulham — serving customers behind a counter while his friends believe he is abroad. Gissing's academic career ended at eighteen when he was caught stealing to support a young prostitute he married; this late novel of 1905 is his warmest, and the shame of the shop is the whole subject — the shop itself turns out to be a relief. Fifty-eight plates, from Constable to Munch, trace the everyday world of shopfronts, streets and quiet interiors that Gissing's grocer inhabits.