Includes bibliographical references (pages xxviii-xxix).
Note
Print version record.
Contents
Cover; Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Note on the Text; Select Bibliography; A Chronology of George Gissing; Map: The London of The Odd Women; THE ODD WOMEN; Explanatory Notes.
Summary
Set in grimy, fog-ridden London, Gissing's 'odd' women range from the idealistic Mary Barfoot and Rhoda Nunn, who run a school to train young women in office skills for work, to the Madden sisters struggling to subsist in low-paid jobs. Yet it is for the youngest Madden sister's marriage that the novel reserves its most sinister critique. With superb detachment Gissing captures contemporary society's ambivalence towards its own period of transition. The Odd Women is anovel engaged with all the major sexual and social issues of the late-nineteenth century. Judged by contemporary reviewers as equinox.