The Nether World

By: George Gissing

Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton

Dramatic, fast-moving and brutal, Gissing’s highly regarded early novel lays bare the reality of urban poverty in 1870s London.

Old Michael Snowdon returns to the city with an inheritance that he determines should go towards helping the poor—but goodness and charity are not to play a part here. Everyone has an agenda, and scheming spreads through the story like a disease. Gissing’s own experience of London as an outsider in a vast city that both fascinated and appalled him gave him the tools and the drive to create a visceral sense of place. Life is unremittingly grim for just about everyone, from the weak and well-intentioned Jane to the coarse, cunning Clem Peckover and her feckless rival Pennyloaf Candy.

The author offers no escape from the gloomy cycle, and there is something alarmingly timeless in the unvarnished portrait of human nature.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

Public Domain (P)2022 Naxos AudioBooks UK Ltd.

Loved it a really amazing story. I didn’t want it to end. 

The story follows a group of people in the slums of late Victorian London. There is an inheritance, and some of these people are scheming to get their hands on it but it’s more than just a story about an inheritance. T The descriptions of the poverty on the slums in London as part of this novel, the best way to describe it is the setting is like a Charles Dickens novel but the characters are tragic like in a Thomas Hardy novel. Definitely worth the credit.