The idea of the superfluity of unmarried women was one the `New Woman` novels of the 1890s sought to challenge. But in The Odd Women (1893) Gissing satirizes the prevailing literary image of the `New Woman` and makes the point that unmarried women were generally viewed less as noble and romantic figures than as `odd` and marginal in relation to the ideal of womanhood itself. Set in grimy, fog-ridden London, these `odd` women range from the idealistic, financially self-sufficient Mary Barfoot and Rhoda Nunn, who run a school to train young women in office skills for work, to the Madden sisters struggling to subsist in low-paid jobs and experiencing little comfort or pleasure in their lives. Yet it is for the youngest Madden sister`s marriage that the novel reserves its most sinister critique.

With superb detachment Gissing captures contemporary society`s ambivalence towards its own period of transition. The Odd Women is a novel engaged with all the major sexual and social issues of the late-nineteenth century. Judged by contemporary reviewers as equal to Zola and Ibsen, Gissing was seen to have produced an `intensely modern` work and it is perhaps for this reason that the issues it raises remain the subject of contemporary debate.

With a map.