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Three generations of critics have commented on the parallels between George Orwell and his favorite novelist, George Gissing. "I am a great fan of his," Orwell wrote in 1948, proclaiming "that England has produced very few better novelists." This in-depth study reveals that Orwell drew heavily on the Gissing novels he admired in shaping his own. Gissing's New Grub Street and The Odd Women directly influenced Orwell's Depression-era novels Keep the Aspidstra Flying and A Clergyman's Daughter . Even Orwell's most imaginative work, Animal Farm , mirrors Gissing's own novel of a failed Socialist Utopia, Demos . Gissing was Orwell's role model and alter ego. Gissing provided him with a touchstone to his beliefs, his pessimism, his love of Dickens and cozy corners, his suspicion of "progress," his restless sexuality. To understand Orwell fully, one must first read Gissing.

Orwell and Gissing