George Meredith




 * This article is about the British novelist "George Meredith". For the founder of Swansea, Tasmania, see George Meredith (Tasmanian settler).

George Meredith, OM (12 February 1828 – 18 May 1909) was an English poet and novelist and poet of the Victorian era.

Life
Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England, a son and grandson of naval outfitters. His mother died when he was five. At the age of 14 he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two years. He read law and was articled as a solicitor, but abandoned that profession for journalism and poetry shortly after marrying Mary Ellen Nicolls, a widowed daughter of Thomas Love Peacock, in 1849: he was twenty-one years old and she was twenty-eight.

He collected his early writings, first published in periodicals, into Poems, published to some acclaim in 1851. His wife ran off with the English Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis [1830–1916] in 1858; she died three years later. The collection of "sonnets" entitled Modern Love (1862) came of this experience as did The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, his first "major novel".

He married Marie Vulliamy in 1864 and settled in Surrey. He continued writing novels and poetry, often inspired by nature. His writing was characterised by a fascination with imagery and indirect references. He had a keen understanding of comedy and his Essay on Comedy (1877) is still quoted in most discussions of the history of comic theory. In The Egoist, published in 1879, he applies some of his theories of comedy in one of his most enduring novels. Some of his writings, including The Egoist, also highlight the subjection of women during the Victorian period. During most of his career, he had difficulty achieving popular success. His first truly successful novel was Diana of the Crossways published in 1885.

Meredith supplemented his often uncertain writer's income with a job as a publisher's reader. His advice to Chapman and Hall made him influential in the world of letters. His friends in the literary world included, at different times, William and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Leslie Stephen, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Gissing and J. M. Barrie. His contemporary Sir Arthur Conan Doyle paid him homage in the short-story The Boscombe Valley Mystery, when Sherlock Holmes says to Dr. Watson during the discussion of the case, "And now let us talk about George Meredith, if you please, and we shall leave all minor matters until to-morrow." Oscar Wilde, in his dialogue The Decay of Lying, implies that Meredith, along with Balzac, is his favourite novelist, saying "Ah, Meredith! Who can define him? His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning".

In 1868 he was introduced to Thomas Hardy by Frederick Chapman of Chapman & Hall the publishers. Hardy had submitted his first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady. Meredith advised Hardy not to publish his book as it would be attacked by reviewers and destroy his hopes of becoming a novelist. Meredith felt the book was too bitter a satire on the rich and counselled Hardy to put it aside and write another 'with a purely artistic purpose' and more of a plot. Meredith spoke from experience; his first big novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, was judged so shocking that Mudie's circulating library had cancelled an order of 300 copies. Hardy continued to try and publish the novel: however it remained unpublished, though he clearly took Meredith's advice seriously. (ref: Claire Tomalin, 'Thomas Hardy The Time Torn Man' published by Penguin 2007 pp92)

Before his death, Meredith was honoured from many quarters: he succeeded Lord Tennyson as president of the Society of Authors; in 1905 he was appointed to the Order of Merit by King Edward VII.

In 1909 he died at his home in Box Hill, Surrey.

Essays

 * Essay on Comedy (1877)

Novels

 * The Shaving of Shagpat (1856)
 * Farina (1857)
 * The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859)
 * Evan Harrington (1861)
 * Emilia in England (1864), republished as Sandra Belloni in 1887
 * Rhoda Fleming (1865)
 * Vittoria (1867)
 * The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871)
 * Beauchamp's Career (1875)
 * The House on the Beach (1877)
 * The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper (1877)
 * The Tale of Chloe (1879)
 * The Egoist (1879)
 * The Tragic Comedians (1880)
 * Diana of the Crossways (1885)
 * One of our Conquerors (1891)
 * Lord Ormont and his Aminta (1894)
 * The Amazing Marriage (1895)
 * Celt and Saxon (1910)

Poetry

 * Poems (1851)
 * Modern Love (1862)
 * Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883)
 * The Woods of Westermain (1883)
 * A Faith on Trial (1885)
 * Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life (1887)
 * A Reading of Earth (1888)
 * The Empty Purse (1892)
 * Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History(1898)
 * A Reading of Life (1901)
 * Last Poems (1909)
 * ''Lucifer in Starlight
 * The Lark Ascending (the inspiration for Vaughn Williams' instrumental work The Lark Ascending).