The Victorian novelist George Gissing (1857-1903) was born on 22 November in Wakefield and lived as a boy in the house behind his father's chemist's shop in Thompson's Yard, just off Westgate. 

George Gissing wrote 23 novels as well as two studies of Dickens, a travel book and numerous short stories. Among his best works are the semi-autobiographical The Private Papers of Henry  Ryecroft and New Grub Street. In the latter he writes about the problems of struggling authors and the trade of hack journalism.

Although after his father’s death Gissing never lived permanently in Wakefield, his recollections of his home town, its landscape and some of its citizens colour some of his short stories and novels (A Life's Morning, is set in a thinly disguised Wakefield).

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As part of the celebrations to mark the 150th Anniversary of Gissing's birth a blue plaque was unveiled by Wakefield Civic Society at his birthplace.