GISSING (George). The emancipated: A Novel By George Gissing Author of "The Nether World," "Thyrza," etc. In three volumes. London: Richard Bentley and Son, Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen, 1890. (All rights reserved.) 3 Vols., sm.cr.8vo; half-titles not called for; final blank in volume two; pp.[iv]+308; [iv]+306+[ii]; [iv]+308; quarter olive brown smooth cloth lettered and with short rule, gilt, on spine, pale brown unglazed paper sides blocked (not printed) with over-all pattern in dark brown; white end-papers printed with repeating pattern of broken diamond-shaped spaces containing alternately the publisher's monogram, and the publisher's emblem and motto. Three minute scuff marks on paper of sides in volume two, and two linked peeled patches measuring an inch and a quarter by half an inch and three quarters of an inch by a quarter of an inch on the front board of volume one, affecting the blocked surface of the paper only; otherwise a fine copy that has never seen library use.

Coustillas' Check-list, 106, describing a copy in "brown boards with light and dark brown design"; Jarndyce, Catalogue LXXXV, describing the boards as "blocked in grey and brown"; Collie, VIII a, describing the boards as "covered with light brown patterned paper" and the end-papers as "cream" with "a diagonal green pattern of crosses creating diamond-shaped spaces" etc. There may have been more than one binding-batch, but we doubt that there are as many variants as these descriptions seem to suggest. Certainly if the end-papers in the present copy are regarded as "cream", so is the text-paper, and we suspect that if the latter darkened the printed design might well start to look "green". We handled the copy described by Coustillas, and it was the same as this, but dirtier, the ‘light' of the ‘light and dark brown' that he describes being the original paper colour. The present copy is unusually fresh. Sadleir, 966, describes a fine copy, possibly from the Bentley file, which agrees with ours except that it is without the final blank in volume two, the first leaf of the final gathering in his copy being a singleton, which was apparently the case also with the copy listed by Wolff under 2546. "‘The Emancipated' marked the end of Gissing's deliberate Naturalist period and the beginning of a series of psychological novels, which were less concerned with the effects of environment and more concerned with the emotional and intellectual conflicts experienced by socially alienated characters." - Collie. It thus came at a pivotal moment of his development. Gissing's contract with Bentley provided that he should be paid an advance of £150, with an additional payment of £50 when 850 copies had been sold, and a further £50 when a thousand had been sold. In the event, Bentley reported receips of only £392. Making full allowance for library discounts, it does not seem probable that this could represent a sale of more than 350 to 400 copies, and it is perhaps unlikely that many more than that number will have been bound up. The thousand copies apparently envisaged in the contract may indeed have been reckoned as calling for more than one printing order. Gissings earlier books published by Smith, Elder were printed in editions of 500.

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