Gissing's early novels were ill-received, but greater recognition came in the 1890s in England and overseas. The increased popularity affected his novels, the short stories he wrote in the period, and his friendships with influential, respected literary figures such as the journalist Henry Norman, author J. M. Barrie and writer and critic Edmund Gosse. By the end of the century, critics placed him with Thomas Hardy and George Meredith as one of the three leading novelists in England.[1] Sir William Robertson Nicoll called him "one of the most original, daring and conscientious workers in fiction".[34] Chesterton saw in him the "soundest of the Dickens critics, a man of genius".[35] George Orwell admired him and in a 1943 Tribune article called him "perhaps the best novelist England has produced," believing his masterpieces were the "three novels, The Odd Women, Demos, and New Grub Street, and his book on Dickens. [The novels'] central theme can be stated in three words — 'not enough money'."[36]
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