I found Jasper Milvain, the "alarmingly modern young man," to be the most interesting character in Gissing's New Grub Street for a number of reasons, the most significant of which is that he evinces what can only be considered a modernist's consciousness in his approach to writing. That is, while it soon becomes clear to the reader that Milvain represents the antithesis of what Edwin Reardon personifies-i.e., the work of literature as an emanation of author's native genius-and thus one of the intercalated plots of the novel involves the incremental success of Milvain as a modern man of letters, and the concomitant gradual abjection of Reardon. In a manner of speaking, then, Milvain and Reardon's fates emerge from a common source, namely some sea change in the reading public's (the consumer's) preferences and tendencies.

Milvain identifies as vulgar the most lucrative market for the product of the man of letter's labor. The vulgarians, or "quarter educated," drive the market (479), and since they have been determined to desire nothing more than chatty ephemera, they have successfully opened an insuperable gulf between material success in writing and artistic success. Reardon's psychologically penetrating novels just aren't in demand. Therefore, there emerges quite an interesting conceptual shift within the nascent hegemony of the quarter-educated as established by their purchasing power: what was once considered healthy artistic integrity has transmuted into a peculiar kind of petit bourgeois hubris, if, in the new paradigm, the writer is more an artisan than an artist. Therefore, Reardon's artistically-compromised and padded three-volume novel, written with no other end in mind than to pander to the vulgar reader, nonetheless achieves only modest success because, the fact that it is indistinguishable from countless other similar works glutting the market aside, his novel is infected from his irrepressible integrity, and thus his novel becomes a strange sort of counterfeit, a psychological narrative masquerading as a popular novel. Reardon thus becomes a sort of Coriolanus among writers.

Milvain, on the other hand, is a sort of Henry Ford among writers; he reveals his particular genius when offering advice to his sister Maud about how to write religious works for juveniles: "I tell you, writing is a business. Get together half-a-dozen fair specimens of the Sunday school prize; study them; discover the essential points of such a composition; hit upon new attractions; then go to work methodically, so many pages a day" (13). In other words, Jasper has managed to streamline and to mechanize the writing process. He studies previous works, abstracts formulae from them, isolates the elements of these formulae, and then deploys and rearranges these elements to give his own writing a patina of originality. By treating writing as an exercise in manipulating formulae, Jasper exchanges "authenticity" (whatever that word means anymore) for the convenience and efficiency of not having to grapple with his own potentially mutable and recalcitrant genius. Jasper did not invent writing, just as Ford did not invent the automobile. But like Ford did with automobile manufacture, Milvain discovers those aspects of writing that lend themselves to mechanical reproduction. Thus he is able to capitalize on his time and effort, and effectively becomes the very machine Reardon believes himself to be but never actually becomes because of his lingering notions of artistic integrity (352).

Also of interest is the fact that Albert Yule is a sort of synthesis of Milvain and Reardon. Like Milvain, Yule attempts to streamline his own literary production by delegating some of the labor to his daughter Marian. However, like Reardon, Yule clings to the superannuated notion of the necessary individuality of writing: "[h]is failings, obvious enough, were the results of a strong and somewhat pedantic individuality ceaselessly at conflict with unpropitious circumstances" (38). In other words, Yule fails to recognize the obsolescence of the lone, learned genius within the realm of literary production. A market of vulgarians who demand occasional literary confections simply does not expect Works of individual genius. Moreover, even if they were in demand, works of individual genius are too ponderously inefficient to keep pace with the rate at which they are consumed. Therefore, Yule straddles the either/or proposition personified by Reardon and Milvain: One may preserve his artistic integrity and write "for the ages"--hence Yule, Biffen, and Reardon's fetishization of Shakespeare, Coleridge and authors of classical antiquity--and starve in the process, or one may write "for the moment" and actually turn a respectable profit.

The shadow of Charles Darwin indeed looms large over the events and characters of New Grub Street. The growth market brought about by the advent of the "quarter-educated" vulgar class, and their discretionary income coupled with their callow aesthetic sensibilities and truncated attention spans, represents a nascent economic, if not ecological niche, for certain social creatures to occupy. However, it's not simply a matter of being able to adapt one's skills to the tastes of these consumers. One must also be a prodigious enough writer to keep pace with an equally prodigious rate of consumption. Individuals like Milvain and Whelpdale are adequately adapted to this niche in that they satisfy the demands of this niche in terms of both content and output. Reardon panders to the vulgar taste only grudgingly and after long resistance and thereby cannot meet the production demands of this niche. Biffen absolutely refuses to pander at all. Alfred Yule does attempt to pander, but his mode of literary production is too inefficient to meet production demands, and he is also largely ignorant of vulgar literary taste. While more in touch with the vulgar reader than her father, Marian Yule is as inefficient in her literary production as her father. Therefore, each of the characters named above are equally maladaptive, albeit for various reasons, and thus their extinction by the novel's end strikes the reader as somehow inevitable. Whereas Milvain and Reardon's widow Amy are left to come together as the triumphant niche occupants and thus reproduce themselves in their offspring, should they decide to produce any.

George Gissing's 1891 novel, "New Grub Street," is likely one of the most depressing books I've ever read. Certainly, in its descriptions of literary life, be it in publishing, or in my own realm of graduate scholarship, the situations, truths, and lives Gissing portrays are still all too relevant. "New Grub Street" itself points to the timelessness of Gissing's portrayals - as Grub Street was synonymous, even in the eighteenth century with the disrepute of hack writing, and the ignominy of having to make a living by authorship. One of Gissing's primary laments throughout the novel is that the life of the mind is of necessity one which is socially isolating and potentially devastating to any kind of relationships, familial or otherwise. "New Grub Street" gives us a world where friendship is never far from enmity, where love is never far from the most bitter kinds of hatred.

The anti-heroes of "New Grub Street" are presented to us as the novel begins - Jasper Milvain is a young, if somewhat impoverished, but highly ambitious man, eager to be a figure of influence in literary society at whatever cost. His friend, Edwin Reardon, on the other hand, was brought up on the classics, and toils away in obscurity, determined to gain fame and reputation through meaningful, psychological, and strictly literary fiction. Family matters beset the two - Jasper has two younger sisters to look out for, and Edwin has a beautiful and intelligent wife, who has become expectant of Edwin's potential fame. Throw into the mix Miss Marian Yule, daughter of a declining author of criticism, whose own reputation was never fully realized, and who has indentured his daughter to literary servitude, and we have a pretty list of discontented and anxious people struggling in the cut-throat literary marketplace of London.

Money is of supreme importance in "New Grub Street," and it would be pointless to write a review without making note of it. As always, the literary life is one which is not remunerative for the mass of people who engage upon it, and this causes no end of strife in the novel. As Milvain points out, the paradox of making money in the literary world is that one must have a well-known reputation in order to make money from one's labours. At the same time, one must have money in order to move in circles where one's reputation may be made. This is the center of the novel's difficulties - should one or must one sacrifice principles of strictly literary fame and pander to a vulgar audience in order to simply survive? The question is one in which Reardon finds the greatest challenges to his marriage, his self-esteem, and even his very existence. For Jasper Milvain and his sisters, as well as for Alfred and Marian Yule, there is no question that the needs of subsistence outweigh most other considerations.

"New Grub Street" profoundly questions the relevance of classic literature and high culture to the great mass of people, and by proxy, to the nation itself. For England, which propagated its sense of international importance throughout the nineteenth century by encouraging the study of English literature in its colonial holdings, the matter becomes one of great significance. The careers of Miss Dora Milvain and Mr. Whelpdale, easily the novel's two most charming, endearing, and sympathetic characters, attempt to illustrate the ways in which modern literature may be profitable to both the individual who writes it and the audiences towards which they aim. They may be considered the moral centers of the novel, and redeem Gissing's work from being entirely fatalistic.

"New Grub Street" is a novel that will haunt me for quite some time. As a "man of letters" myself, I can only hope that the novel will serve as an object lesson, and one to which I may turn in hope and despair. The novel is well written, its characters and situations drawn in a very realistic and often sympathetic way. Like the ill-fated "ignobly decent" novel of Mr. Biffen's, "Mr. Bailey, Grocer," "New Grub Street" may seem less like a novel, and more like a series of rambling biographical sketches, but they are indelible and lasting sketches of literary lives as they were in the original Grub Street, still yet in Gissing's time, and as they continue to-day. Very highly recommended.

"New Grub Street," published in three volumes in 1891, is George Gissing's grimly realistic exploration of literary life in 1880s London. While it is a remarkably vivid novel, it is also an accurate and detailed depiction of what it was like to be a struggling author in late nineteenth century England, "a society where," as Professor Bernard Bergonzi points out in his introduction, "literature has become a commodity, and where the writing of fiction does not differ radically from any other form of commercial or industrial production."

"New Grub Street" is the contrapuntal narrative of two literary figures, Edwin Reardon, a struggling novelist who aspires to write great literature without regard to its popular appeal, and Jasper Milvain, a self-centered, materialistic striver whose only concern is with achieving financial success and social position by publishing what the mass public wants to read. As Milvain relates early in the novel, succinctly adumbrating the theme that winds through the entirety of "New Grub Street":

"Understand the difference between a man like Reardon and a man like me. He is the old type of unpractical artist; I am the literary man of 1882. He won't make concessions, or rather, he can't make them; he can't supply the market. I-well, you may say that at present I do nothing; but that's a great mistake, I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skillful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets. . . . Reardon can't do that kind of thing, he's behind his age; he sells a manuscript as if he lives in Sam Johnson's Grub Street. But our Grub Street of today is quite a different place: it is supplied with telegraphic communication, it knows what literary fare is in demand in every part of the world, its inhabitants are men of business, however seedy."

Gissing brilliantly explores this theme through the lives of his characters, each drawn with stunning depth and verisimilitude. There is, of course, Reardon, whose failure as a novelist and neurasthenic decline destroys his marriage and his life. There is also Reardon's wife, Amy, a woman whose love for Reardon withers with the exsanguination of her husband's creative abilities. While the manipulative and seemingly unfeeling Milvain pursues his crass aspirations, he also encourages his two sisters, Dora and Maud, to seek commercial success as writers of children's books. And intertwining all of their lives are the myriad connections each of the characters has with the Yule family, in particular with the nearly impoverished Alfred Yule, a serious writer and literary critic, and his daughter and literary amanuensis, Marian.

It is Marian--struggling to reconcile the literary demands and expectations of her father with the desire to lead her own life, struggling to escape the claustrophobic world of the literary life--who ultimately, pessimistically challenges the verities of that life while sitting in its physical embodiment, the prison-like British Museum library:

"It was gloomy, and one could scarcely see to read; a taste of fog grew perceptible in the warm, headachy air. . . . She kept asking herself what was the use and purpose of such a life as she was condemned to lead. When already there was more good literature in the world than any individual could cope with in his lifetime, here she was exhausting herself in the manufacture of printed stuff which no one even pretended to be any more than a commodity for the day's market. What unspeakable folly! . . . She herself would throw away her pen with joy but for the need of earning money. . . . This huge library, growing into unwieldiness, threatening to become a trackless desert of print-how intolerably it weighed upon the spirit."

It is Marian, too, who ultimately becomes the romantic victim of Milvain's aspirations, the powerful language of Gissing's anti-romantic subplot twisting into almost gothic excess as he extends the metaphor of London's fog to Marian's sleepless depression:

"The thick black fog penetrated every corner of the house. It could be smelt and tasted. Such an atmosphere produces low spirited languor even in the vigorous and hopeful; to those wasted by suffering it is the very reek of the bottomless pit, poisoning the soul. Her face colorless as the pillow, Marian lay neither sleeping nor awake in blank extremity of woe; tears now and then ran down her cheeks, and at times her body was shaken with a throe such as might result from anguish of the torture chamber."

"New Grub Street" is deservedly regarded not only as Gissing's finest novel, but also as one of the finest novels of late nineteenth century English literature. Grimly realistic in its depiction of what it was like to be a struggling writer in late nineteenth century London, it is also remarkable for its historical accuracy and its literary craftsmanship. If you like the realism of writers like Harding and Zola, then "New Grub Street" is a book you must read!

The atlas is U. S. centric even though the title is 'world atlas'. The map of the U. S. takes up about 25 pages, while the map of Italy, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslovia (formerly) take up 2 pages. And the spelling is unbelievable. Many of the place names are rendered in the native language instead of English, at least I assume so. North and South Korea, about the size of Kansas is shown at about 1/2 the size of Kansas. One normally buys a world atlas to learn about the world, not the U. S. A disappointment.

The twentieth edition of Goode's atlas of the world continues to be a standard for U.S.-educational purposes. The reference maps themselves are not too accurate and detailed, but they provide a reasonably well-balanced coverage of the world, with handy larger-scale inset maps for the more populous regions of each continent. There is an elaborate thematic section on a variety of topics about the world, the continents, and the United States in particular. This is supplemented by a very good statistical section, and the 30,000 entry index gazetteer contains a pronunciation guide for each entry, which is unique for a world atlas. Non-US buyers probably have better alternatives, but for school purposes for North America, this is a very good choice. The publication of this twentieth (!) edition illustrates the endurability of this work since 1922.

When I took my first college-level geography class, my professor told the class that Goode's World Atlas is the best atlas on the market. Fifteen years and a couple of editions later, it's still the best atlas I've ever seen. The atlas includes a commendable section on map projections, many excellent thematic maps, easy-to-read regional (general) maps, tables of country and landform sizes, and a wonderful index. If you're looking for a road map, this atlas probably won't help. If you want to learn about the world, or teach school-aged children about the world they live in, then this is one of the top resources out there.

This book provides an excellent introduction to ASP.NET and would make a good text for a ASP.NET101 class. It assumes no prior knowledge of ASP. It assumes no prior knowledge of any programming language. It does not make use of the VS IDE. There were 13 authors plus 4 other contributors, even though only 7 persons are included in the photo printed on the cover (I wonder who got left out). However, the editor and technical reviewers did a good job of bringing all the material together and providing a remarkable degree of consistency. Some others found the style to be choppy. I thought it was fine because of the disjointed nature of the topics. Each chapter is pretty much independent of the other chapters (see the list of chapters at the end of this review).

A reader should finish this book with a basic understanding of C#, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, OOP, Event-driven programming, data structures, components, assemblies, custom controls, error handling, debugging, web services, and security. Highly recommended for someone starting from scratch -- or with only a brief introduction to programming. Someone with programming experience will find about one-fourth of the book to be too basic. Someone with prior experience using an OOP language will find about one-third of the book to be material they already know. Still, it provides a useful introduction to ASP.NET; especially in regard to the structure of ASP.NET and the use of server side controls. Many bits of wisdom can be found throughout the book -- such as on Page 141, "DataStart and DateEnd are better than StartDate and EndDate, as these two related methods will then come next to each other in an alphabetically sorted search."

The Index is 28 pages and very useful.

Here are the chapters:

1) Getting Started with ASP.NET.
2) Anatomy of a ASP.NET Page
3) Forms and HTML Server Controls
4) Storing Information in C#
5) Introducing XML
6) Control Structures and Procedure Programming
7) Even-driven Programming and Postback
8) Introduction to Objects
9) Shared Members and Class Relationships
10) Objects in ASP.NET
11) Objects and Structured Data
12) Reading from Data Sources
13) Manipulating Data Sources
14) ASP.NET Server Controls
15) Reusable Code for ASP.NET
16) .NET Assemblies and Custom Controls
17) Debugging and Error Handling
18) Web Services
19) Configuration and Optimization
20) ASP.NET Security

Jim Holloman
Atlanta, GA
...

I was hoping to get an insight on ASP.NET when I purchased this product, as an experienced developer I would say that this book is too basic for me. This book can be great for a beginners who are just getting into making websites dynamically.

One thing I found somewhat bothering was the fact that it's quite jumpy. In some parts of the book there are portions that say "we will get to this on chapter blah" and what bothered me was that the concept was used in previous examples. An average reader, in my opinion, would want to examine the code and see how it works. The likely chance that he/she will read through the other chapters and look back is less than likely. More than likely they will get confused if they tried to jump through some sections to understand this certain porton. For example, in one of the first 3 chapters they used IF statements in the examples to explain some of the Radio Buttons Functionality. Now someone who doesn't know C# out of the bat will be confused!

Read this book for an overview only...

As a reviewer for Wrox, I was pleased to be given this book to technically review. I found that this C# version of Beginning ASP.Net very informative and highly useful.

Written in a typically good Wrox style, every facet that a beginner would be interested in is covered. However, not just beginners will gain from this book but also "intermediates", especially those not familiar with C# will also gain a lot from this books contents. I especially liked the Web Services chapter as well as the debugging chapter.

I would certainly class this is one of my top Wrox books.

Many wrox books are great, but this one was a disappointment. As an "classic ASP" developer I found the examples unhelpful and impractical, the information spread out, the request and response object - used constantly in classic ASP - were so poorly explained I still have no idea how they function in ASP.net. I am sure that ASP.NET has many important benefits that make it superior to Classic ASP, but after reading almost 600 pages (!) I feel I do not understand how to achieve the same result I can easily get in Classic ASP. Not recommended.

I wanted to create a simple web application with this book that would allow for authenticated users to add content and allow non-authenticated users to simply view content. The book was perfect for setting up the the database connections, and web forms. The book fell on its face with security. The concepts were included and some examples were included, but there was no information about user roles when using forms based authentication. One feature I think most ASP.Net applications are going to have is authentication so I found it distressing that it was given such incomplete coverage. To get more information you need to look at one of two other Wrox books - Beginning Web Programming with Visual Basic.Net and Visual Studio.Net, or ASP.Net Security. The first book covers mostly the same information as this book, but goes into more detail on security. It too though is not complete. With the inclusion of about five more pages in this book it would have been complete from my viewpoint.

First of all, a good number of my undergraduates like this book as it introduces the bare bones required to get something up and running quite quickly. The downside of the book, from my persusal of it, is that it is less even than it could be, or perhaps should be. In many chapters (especially the crucial early ones) examples are often introduced and developed before their key constructs are properly explained. This is simply confusing to naive readers and highly irritating. For instance, the earliest ASP.net script uses "asp:label" without explaining the syntax or semantics for a another few dozen pages.

Unfortunately this is a bit of trend throughout the book and at the very least makes it frustrating. However, once you allow for this, (and it's a big allowance to make) the book is very handy.

It has bundles of scripts that anyone involved in web work will find interesting and useful. You can quibble with some of these (the login scripting for example) contra other books such as Professional ASP.NET, but I suspect this is a byproduct of committee authorship.

The book is clearly aimed at the learner so don't expect Enterprise quality insights into server management. Given the huge range of architectures and technologies available to the developer, producing any 'true' learner book is a considerable challenge. If you need a book for coursework alone, then this will probably meet most of your needs. If you earn your living with the .NET and its companions, then you need some supplementary texts.