Demos cover

Demos

Rating 3.5
Word count
1.1M words
Chapters
109

Tags

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Demos by George GissingAuthor: Gissing, George, 1857-1903,Language: English, Class: PR: Language and Literatures: English literature, Release Date: Aug 1, 2003

Editor's review

Demos is a social novel by George Gissing. Its title borrows the sense of "the people" and turns its gaze on the lives and circumstances of the urban poor and the working class. The work attends to the situation of ordinary people under poverty, labor, and social pressure, carrying Gissing's characteristic realist bent and cool observation. Unlike light entertainment, the novel is more concerned with the tension between social reality and individual fate, and readers can glimpse a cross-section of late nineteenth-century English social structure. This edition is a public-domain English ebook provided by Project Gutenberg, in English; its length and narrative pace belong to the traditional long novel and require some patience. It serves well as supplementary reading for understanding Gissing's social concern or for expanding one's reading of labor themes in English literature. While reading, note how the author presents class differences through everyday scenes and personal choices, rather than expecting dramatic plot developments.

Who it's for

A good fit for

  • Readers interested in novels about the underclass and labor themes
  • Researchers seeking to understand Gissing's social realist style
  • Readers interested in late nineteenth-century English social conditions
  • Readers of public-domain books with experience of long English fiction

Not a good fit for

  • Readers hoping for light, entertaining stories
  • Readers impatient with a slow narrative pace
  • Beginning readers who need a Chinese translation or detailed annotations

Reading tips

  1. First learn about the background of late nineteenth-century English labor and urban poverty, then enter the text.
  2. Proceed chapter by chapter, noting details of the author's descriptions of everyday work and living conditions.
  3. Read alongside other social novels to compare how different authors handle similar material.
  4. English readers may read one chapter through first, then review character relationships and key scenes.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. 45
  46. 46
  47. 47
  48. 48
  49. 49
  50. 50
  51. 51
  52. 52
  53. 53
  54. 54
  55. 55
  56. 56
  57. 57
  58. 58
  59. 59
  60. 60
  61. 61
  62. 62
  63. 63
  64. 64
  65. 65
  66. 66
  67. 67
  68. 68
  69. 69
  70. 70
  71. 71
  72. 72
  73. 73
  74. 74
  75. 75
  76. 76
  77. 77
  78. 78
  79. 79
  80. 80
  81. 81
  82. 82
  83. 83
  84. 84
  85. 85
  86. 86
  87. 87
  88. 88
  89. 89
  90. 90
  91. 91
  92. 92
  93. 93
  94. 94
  95. 95
  96. 96
  97. 97
  98. 98
  99. 99
  100. 100
  101. 101
  102. 102
  103. 103
  104. 104
  105. 105
  106. 106
  107. 107
  108. 108
  109. 109

FAQ

What does the title Demos mean?
"Demos" in English often means "the people" or "the common people," sharing a root with the word democracy. Given the book's classification as English literature and Gissing's authorial concerns, the title points to the lives of ordinary people, especially the working class, rather than to an abstract work of political theory.
Is this book suitable as an introductory text for learning about British labor history?
It can serve as literary supplementary material, helping readers sense the social atmosphere and the circumstances of individuals at the time, but a novel is not a work of historical research and should not replace specialized social history. With some basic historical background, readers will more easily understand the real pressures the characters face.
What should I keep in mind when reading the electronic edition?
This edition is a public-domain English ebook released by Project Gutenberg. It is advisable to use reading software that supports adjustable font size and bookmarks, and to read in chapter-by-chapter segments. Since the text is in the original English, use a dictionary for unfamiliar words rather than checking every one; first grasp the overall direction of characters and scenes.

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

George Gissing (Gissing, George, 1857-1903) was an English novelist, though public information about his life and education is limited. The library holds 24 of his works, most of which focus on the living conditions of the urban lower classes and those on the margins of the middle class, while also touching on themes of personal growth and self-discipline; they are commonly classified under inspirational growth. His representative works include New Grub Street, The Odd Women, The Nether World and Born in Exile. These works mostly present individual fates under poverty, class and professional pressure in a realistic style, with a cold and restrained tone. He also wrote By the Ionian Sea, a travelogue of southern Italy, and The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, an essayistic work, revealing his observant and introspective side, as well as short story collections such as The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories.

More by the same author

Top rated in the same category