Demos was published by Smith, Elder in three volumes in 1886, and it was the novel that established Gissing’s reputation. The story follows Richard Mutimer, a working-class radical who inherits a country estate and attempts to turn it into a model socialist community. The inheritance transforms him — not immediately, but gradually and insidiously — from a sincere idealist into a petty tyrant who uses socialist rhetoric to justify his own authority while enjoying the comforts of the class he claims to oppose.
Gissing’s treatment of socialism is complex and easily misread. He was not anti-socialist — he sympathized deeply with working-class suffering and supported many socialist aims — but he was skeptical about the capacity of any political movement to survive the corruptions of power and human nature. Mutimer’s failure is not presented as a vindication of capitalism but as a tragedy: the man’s ideals were genuine, but they could not survive contact with money, status, and the temptations of authority.
The novel also examines the class dynamics of Mutimer’s marriage to Adela Waltham, a young woman of the gentry class whom he marries as part of his social ascent. The marriage is unhappy in ways that Gissing understood from personal experience: Mutimer and Adela come from different worlds, and their cultural incompatibility (she reads Tennyson, he reads political tracts) creates a gulf that shared domestic space cannot bridge.
Demos established Gissing’s characteristic territory: the border between classes, where the brutal facts of economic life collide with the aspirations of intellect and idealism. Every subsequent Gissing novel would work this ground, but Demos was the first to do so with the skill and conviction that marked him as a major novelist.
Collecting Demos
First edition (Smith, Elder, London, 1886): Three volumes, brown cloth. Published anonymously.
Market values:
- Three-volume first, anonymous issue: $1,000–$4,000
- One-volume reprint: $60–$150
- Later editions: $5–$15