In the Year of Jubilee

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Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press, 1976 - Fiction - 457 pages
Queen Victoria's fervently celebrated Jubilee in 1887--when the aging monarch was the seemingly immortal symbol of England's greatness and Empire-spurred George Gissing to write this trenchant and satirical novel of late Victorian society.

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Contents

IN THE YEAR OF JUBILEE
1
Notes to the Text
445
Bibliography
455
Copyright

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Page 449 - Bourne that has long run dry, is a little nook composed of two irregular quadrangles, called Staple Inn. It is one of those nooks, the turning into which out of the clashing street, imparts to the relieved pedestrian the sensation of having put cotton in his ears, and velvet soles on his boots. 17 Vol.13 It is one of those nooks where a few smoky sparrows twitter in smoky trees, as though they called to one another,
Page 60 - Blue ; " somebody's "Soap;" somebody's "High-class Jams;" and behold, inserted between the Soap and the Jam — " God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoso believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Page 309 - High and low, on every available yard of wall, advertisements clamoured to the" eye : theatres, journals, soaps, medicines, concerts, furniture, wines, prayer-meetings — all the produce and refuse of civilisation announced in staring letters, in daubed effigies, base, paltry, grotesque. A battle-ground of advertisements, fitly chosen amid subterranean din and reek ; a symbol to the gaze of that relentless warfare which ceases not night and day, in the world above.
Page 218 - London, devourer of rural limits, of a sudden made hideous encroachment upon the old estate, now held by a speculative builder ; of many streets to be constructed, three or four had already come into being, and others were mapped out, in mud and inchoate masonry, athwart the ravaged field. Great elms, the pride of generations passed away, fell before the speculative axe, or were left standing in mournful isolation to please a speculative architect ; bits of wayside hedge still shivered in fog and...
Page 104 - The strong west wind lashed her cheeks to a glowing colour ; excitement added brilliancy to her eyes. As soon as she had recovered from the first impression, this spectacle of a world's wonder served only to exhilarate her ; she was not awed by what she looked upon. In her conceit of selfimportance, she stood there, above the battling millions of men, proof against mystery and dread, untouched by the voices of the past, and in the present seeing only common things, though from an odd point of view....
Page 447 - At night all the great streets were packed from side to side with a clearly divided double current of people, all vehicles being forbidden. You walked at the rate of a funeral horse from top of Bond Street to the Bank, by way of Pall Mall, Strand, etc. Such a concourse of people I never saw. The effect of illuminated London from the top of our house here was strange. Of course, I didn't try to see the daylight proceedings.
Page 447 - in every object there is inexhaustible meaning ; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
Page xiii - establishment for young ladies " up to the close of her seventeenth year : the other two had pursued culture at a still more pretentious institute until they were eighteen. All could "play the piano " ; all declared — and believed — that they " knew French." Heatrice had "done" Political Economy; Fanny had "been through " Inorganic Chemistry and Botany.

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