LADY ON THE WEB

I've just begun reading George Gissing's novel A Life's Morning, in the 1928 Eveleigh, Nash & Grayson, Ltd. London edition, with an introduction by Morley Roberts, which I do not plan to read. I have noticed that introductions far too often reveal key plot points and even endings, not just to the work of fiction in which one is currently engaged, but to the author's entire oeuvre. And I do not care to read even one negative adjective in a capsule description or bookjacket blurb, especially ahead of time, as it then flavors the whole experience of reading the novel.

Poor handsome George, with his enormous "soup-strainer" moustache. He always looks so sad in his photos.

A Partial Bibliography of George Robert Gissing (1857-1903)
Workers in the Dawn (3 vols. London: Remington, 1880)
The Unclassed (3 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1884)
Isabel Clarendon (2 vols. London: Chapman & Hall, 1886)
Demos (3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1886)
Thyrza (3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1887)
A Life's Morning (3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1888)
The Nether World (3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1889)
The Emancipated (3 vols. London: Bentley, 1890)
New Grub Street (3 vols. London: Smith, Elder, 1891)
Denzil Quarrier (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1892)
Born in Exile (3 vols. London: A. & C. Black, 1892)
The Odd Women (3 vols. London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1893)
In the Year of Jubilee (3 vols. London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1894)
Eve's Ransom (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1895)
The Paying Guest (London: Cassell, 1895)
Sleeping Fires (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1895)
The Whirlpool (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1897)
Human Odds and Ends, (London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1898)
Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (London: Blackie, 1898)
The Town Traveller (London: Methuen, 1898)
The Crown of Life (London: Methuen, 1899)
Our Friend the Charlatan (London: Chapman & Hall, 1901)
By the Ionian Sea (London: Chapman & Hall, 1901)
The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft (London: Constable, 1903)
Veranilda (London: Archibald Constable, 1904)
Will Warburton (London: Archibald Constable, 1904)
The House of Cobwebs (London: Constable, 1906)
The Sins of the Fathers and Other Tales (1924)
The Immortal Dickens (1925)
A Victim of Circumstances and Other Stories (1927)
A Yorkshire Lass (New York, 1928)
Selections Autobiographical and Imaginative from the Works of George Gissing (London, Jonathan Cape, 1929)
Brownie (1931)
George Gissing: Stories and Sketches (London, Michael Joseph, 1938)
George Gissing: Essays and Fiction (1970)
My First Rehearsal and My Clerical Rival (1970)