"Unsettled Accounts locates Gissing's novels alongside the place of money in other nineteenth-century writing, in particular the novels of Charles Dickens, a key influence. This study also examines the range of Gissing's preoccupations, from the condition of the working classes, to the making of sexual difference to the commodification of art, and demonstrates why Gissing's dissident but accurate respresentations of the emergent modernity of late nineteenth-century urban culture deserve a unique place in English literary history." "Unsettled Accounts constitutes both a valuable introduction to Gissing's work and a groundbreaking new study of the contexts which shaped the development of his work. This book will be compelling reading not only for anyone interested in Gissing, but also for readers concerned with the economics of the Victorian novel, and with fin-de-siecle literary culture."--BOOK JACKET.