The Unclassed was published by Chapman and Hall in three volumes in 1884, Gissing’s second novel (after Workers in the Dawn, published at his own expense in 1880). The title refers to people who fall outside the conventional Victorian class structure: the educated poor, the respectable working class, the disreputable genteel — all those whose position in society is ambiguous, unstable, and a source of constant anxiety.
The novel follows Osmond Waymark, a schoolteacher and aspiring novelist who is clearly a version of Gissing himself, and Ida Starr, the daughter of a prostitute who has been raised in respectability but whose origins threaten to drag her back into the underworld. Their relationship — complicated by class, money, and the Victorian code of sexual morality — is the novel’s emotional center, and Gissing handles it with a frankness about sexuality and class that was unusual for the period.
The novel was substantially revised for a one-volume edition in 1895, in which Gissing toned down some of the more explicit passages and tightened the narrative. Both versions have their admirers: the 1884 edition is rawer and more ambitious; the 1895 revision is more polished and economical. The differences between the two versions have been the subject of scholarly study.
The Unclassed is apprentice work — it lacks the sustained power of New Grub Street or The Nether World — but it contains the seeds of everything Gissing would achieve. The theme of the educated man trapped by poverty, the sympathetic treatment of women in impossible situations, and the refusal to moralize about sexual behavior are all present, and the novel deserves attention as the first clear statement of Gissing’s distinctive vision.
Collecting The Unclassed
First edition (Chapman and Hall, London, 1884): Three volumes, brown cloth.
Market values:
- Three-volume first edition: $800–$3,000
- 1895 revised one-volume edition: $80–$200
- Later editions: $5–$15