Will Warburton: A Romance of Real Life was George Gissing's last novel. It was published in 1905, two years after Gissing's death.
Plot summary Will Warburton is a young gentleman of means, a man of commerce, who, losing everything in speculation, is forced into the life of a grocer,Adcock, A. St. John (1905). "Gissing's Last Novel," The Bookman, Vol. XXVIII, No. 167, p. 162. a thing he finds, at first, enormously tragic.
Will keeps his fate secret from his friends and his family and lives a life of humiliation and privation. It is only when the woman with whom he is falling in love discovers he is a grocer, and throws him over, that Will realizes that there is no shame in being a grocer.
Notes
Further reading Halperin, John (1985). Introduction to Will Warburton. London: Hogarth Press. Partridge, Colin (1981). Introduction to Will Warburton. Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press.
External links Will Warburton, at Internet Archive Will Warburton, at Project Gutenberg