An old man back from years in Australia returns to Clerkenwell, where his granddaughter Jane Snowdon drudges as a servant in a lodging house. Around her move the Hewetts, the Peckovers, the hard-pressed Pennyloaf Candy and the bitter, ambitious Clara Hewett, all struggling in the workshops and tenements of a London where money decides everything.
Gissing’s bleakest and most powerful portrait of the London poor, for readers of Dickens and Zola alike. Download the free EPUB.