Born in Wakefield, Yorkshire on 22 November 1857, the son of a chemist who died young, leaving five children without means of support. Nevertheless, Gissing became a brilliant student who at the age of 15 won a scholarship to Owens College, Manchester. However, on the eve of his success, his life and prospects collapsed entirely when he was caught stealing money from the students’ cloakroom at the college where he studied. The money was intended for Nell Harrison, a young prostitute with whom Gissing had fallen in love. He married her years later — Gissing’s marriage was deeply unhappy: his wife was intermittently drunk and returned to prostitution; he eventually paid her to live apart from him. Gissing never knew fame or success in his lifetime. His second marriage also ran aground. He was forced to sell the copyright of his novels outright to publishers, meaning that even his occasional successes did him little good. Nevertheless, from 1884 onwards he earned a modest living from his novels and a teaching post. His middle-period novels of the 1890s deal with class divisions and the social problems of his day. Gissing died in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, in the Bay of Biscay, on 28 December 1903.