Jane Gissing

The Gissing family of Great Britain included several noted writers, Olympic competitors, and teachers.

George Gissing

George Robert Gissing (1857–1903) was an English novelist, some of whose work has appeared in many editions, including The Nether World (1889), New Grub Street (1891) and The Odd Women (1893). Algernon Gissing

Algernon Fred Gissing (1860–1937) was an English novelist and the younger brother of George Robert Gissing.

Alfred Charles Gissing

Alfred Charles Gissing (20 January 1896 (Epsom, Surrey) – 27 November 1975 (Valais, Switzerland), was an English writer and headmaster, the youngest son of George. After the early death of their father on 28 December 1903, Walter Leonard (born at Exeter on 10 December 1891 ) and Alfred Charles, benefited from a small government pension. The following report was published in The Times newspaper for 24 June 1904:

At the time, Walter was a boarder at school in Norfolk, and Alfred had moved in 1902 to live with foster parents, a Mr and Mrs Smith who were farmers at Treverva Farm, Mabe, near Falmouth, Cornwall. Alfred lived with them until he left school. Like his brother Walter, Alfred went as a boarder to Gresham's School, Holt.

On 10 December 1915, he filed an "application for appointment to a temporary commission in the regular army for the period of the war". As he was under 21 years of age, the application had to be signed by his guardian, Clara Collet, who took care of him after his father's death. Alfred was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery on 16 December 1915, and promoted to lieutenant on 7 July 1917. He was in India when the news reached him of his brother Walter's death at Gommecourt during the Battle of the Somme on 1 July 1916.

After the end of the war, Alfred Gissing remained in the army, serving in Iraq and then working for the Inter-Allied Press Censorship Committee in Constantinople between May 1919 and February 1920. He was demobilised on 5 March 1919 and resigned his commission in the Special Reserve on 28 April 1920, leaving the service with the rank of lieutenant.

In the 1939 Register he described himself as a writer & Air Raid Warden (A.R.P.), living with his wife in Croft Cottage, Barbon, South Westmorland R.D., Westmorland. Despite his military experience and while he was still in his early forties at the beginning of the Second World War, Alfred Gissing did not seem to have joined the Army or the Home Guard and nothing is known of his activities during that time.

Writer At about the time he left the army, Alfred Gissing assumed his father's posthumous interests from Algernon Gissing, and he went to live at Fernleigh, St Mark's Avenue, Leeds, Yorkshire, which had been Margaret and Ellen Gissing's home. He began to develop a collected edition of his father's works and to correspond with publishers and collectors as literary executor.

From 1924 until 1927, he lived in Richmond, Surrey. He wrote a preface for A Victim of Circumstances by George Gissing (Constable and Dutton, 1927), a collection of his father's short stories, and he edited a compendium of his father's work, Selections Autobiographical and Imaginative from the Works of George Gissing (Jonathan Cape, 1929).

Alfred Gissing sold a number of his father's literary papers, often not using his own name in doing so. The critic Bouwe Postmus speculates that he felt guilty about these sales.

Jane Eleanor Margaret Gissing Alfred Gissing's daughter, Jane Eleanor Margaret Gissing (married: Pétremand-Besancenet) (born 9 June 1943 in Leeds, UK), is a British Olympic level skier who took part in the World Championships in 1962 in Chamonix (France) and who was also part of the British team at the 1964 Winter Olympics, held in Innsbruck, Austria. She is the granddaughter of Victorian novelist George Gissing.

Next generations Estelle Eleanor Pétremand-Koszali (born on 8 February 1970), Jane's daughter, was an Alpine skier who was a member of the Swiss Ski Team and competed at the World Cup level. She is married to Pierre Koszali, a Hungarian Alpine skier who took part in the Olympics in 1992 in Albertville, France, and competed in two World Championships. Her son Zac Jonathan Koszali, born on 19 May 2005, is also an Alpine skier athlete in Switzerland.