Osmond Waymark, a struggling teacher answers a magazine advertisement, placed by Julian Casti, a half-Italian who had felt himself to be rejected by society. The two strike up a meaningful and deep friendship. George Robert Gissing was an English novelist, a teacher and tutor throughout his life. He failed to get his first novel accepted by a publisher, and so published it privately, funding it with money from an inheritance. He published his first novel, Workers in the Dawn, in 1880 and later produced over twenty novels during his literary career becoming one of the most popular writers.