New Grub Street

Jasper Milvain is an ambitious young writer trying to establish himself as a journalist in London. During a stay with his mother and sisters in the country, he meets Alfred Yule, an experienced and disappointed man of letters, and his daughter, Marian, to whom Milvain finds himself troublingly attracted-troublingly because she is poor and because Milvain has already decided he must marry a woman who can help him in his career. With engaging frankness, Milvain explains to her his ideas about the importance of money in a literary life: It can buy the all-important first success as well as influential friends.