The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft
George Gissing framed this 1903 book as the diary of Henry Ryecroft, a worn-out author who, after decades of hardship, comes into a small legacy and retires to a quiet cottage in Devon. Freed at last from money worries, Ryecroft fills his days with books, long walks, and food remembered with real gratitude, and he sets down his thoughts across four seasonal chapters. The reflections range over English weather, the pleasures of reading, the cruelty of the poverty he has escaped, and the calm of a simple life. Much of it is Gissing writing about himself, tender and rueful in a way his darker novels rarely allow. Available here as a free PDF and EPUB edition.
About the Author
George Gissing (1857-1903) was an English novelist whose work drew on his own years of poverty and hardship. Author of New Grub Street and The Odd Women, he wrote unsparingly about class, money, and the frustrated ambitions of the educated poor in late Victorian England.
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