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The original Grub Street was an address in London (it was renamed Milton Street in 1830) described by Dr. Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary of the English Language as "much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems." The term was applied figuratively to the dog-eat-dog world of pens-for-hire as early as 1630, and not surprisingly it became the subject of several novels. Writer Tobias Smollett, all too familiar with hackwork himself, described a Grub Street dinner party in his novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771). And the allusion to Grub Street still packed a punch in 1891 when George Gissing chose New Grub Street as the title of his realistic novel about intrigues of the Victorian literary world.
Examples of Grub Street in a Sentence
Joe Reid, Vulture, 11 Aug. 2025
But the obsessive, granular restaurant news era arguably starts when Grub Street debuts in 2006 and its editor, Josh Ozersky, aims to post news every hour.
—New York Times, 7 May 2025
Cite this Entry
“Grub Street.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Grub%20Street. Accessed 29 Sep. 2025.
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