Biffen

In the 1891 novel New Grub Street by George Gissing (pictured here), a character named Harold Biffen writes a novel called Mr Bailey, Grocer, which describes the life of an ordinary grocer in absolutely realistic detail and with zero dramatic shaping. Biffen’s novel is “unutterably boring” by design; it is about the dull monotony of a man’s life. The novel is a work of art but sheer drudgery to read. Disappointed in love and in art, Biffen ends up poisoning himself.