The work focuses on the unhappy marriage of Arthur Golding, a rising artist from a poor background, and Carrie Mitchell, a prostitute.

It also was designed to serve the function of political polemic, highlighting social issues that Gissing felt strongly about.

[5] The novel is partly based on Gissing's own experiences of an unhappy marriage, to his first wife Marianne Helen Harrison.

In a letter to his brother Algernon after publication, Gissing described the work as an "attack upon certain features of our present religious and social life which to me appear highly condemnable", particularly the "criminal negligence of governments".

As an author, he saw himself as "a mouthpiece of the Radical party", concluding that "It is not a book for women and children, but for thinking and struggling men.

[8] Gissing explained in a letter to Algernon that he had chosen this latter title because the "principal characters are earnest young people striving for improvement in, as it were, the dawn of a new phase of our civilization".

The reviewer considered Gissing to have "considerable readiness and fluency of style" and also praised the author for his graphically realistic depiction of the poor.

[14] In The Academy, George Saintsbury was also unconvinced by the characterisations of the "wicked" upper classes, but he remarked positively on Gissing's sincerity, imagination and adventurousness.

[17] The publication of the review in the Athenaeum prompted Gissing, in a letter to Algernon, to describe critics as "unprincipled vagabonds".