“I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes.”

— George Gissing

Vol. I, Ch. 1 : A Man of His Day, p. 17
New Grub Street : A Novel (1891)
Context: I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes. We are not geniuses, and if we sit down in a spirit of long-eared gravity we shall produce only commonplace stuff. Let us use our wits to earn money, and make the best we can of our lives. If only I had the skill, I would produce novels out-trashing the trashiest that ever sold fifty thousand copies. But it needs skill, mind you; and to deny it is a gross error of the literary pedants. To please the vulgar you must, one way or another, incarnate the genius of vulgarity.

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George Gissing18

English novelist 1857–1903

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“I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying the mob with the food it likes.”

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George Gissing18

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