Thyrza

Lambeth: a hat-maker's workgirl with a beautiful voice, the working-man idealist engaged to her, and the rich young man who comes south of the river to educate the poor and falls in love instead. Gissing's academic career ended at eighteen when he was caught stealing to support a young prostitute he married; he thought this 1887 novel his best, and the tenement streets in it are drawn by someone who had lived in them. Fifty-nine plates, among them portraits by William Rothenstein and George Reid, gather the faces and quiet interiors of the world Gissing knew.