Here is the book in which Gissing, for once, turned away from the sombre and care-laden scenes that dominated his outlook as a novelist, and painted at first hand a picture of that classic South whose art and literature and living sense of beauty were the hidden mainspring of his being. Appreciation of Gissing's genius is steadily growing, and these finely polished sketches of travel reflect an essential part of his experience. With an Introduction by Virginia Woolf