George Meredith, 1828-1909
Biographical note
English novelist and poet.
He 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; she was thirty.
He collected his early writings, first published in periodicals, into Poems, which was published to some acclaim in 1851. His wife left him and their five-year old son in 1858; she died three years later. Her departure was the inspiration for The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, his first "major novel".
He married Marie Vulliamy in 1864 and settled in Surrey. He continued writing novels, and later in life he returned to writing poetry, often inspired by nature. 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."
See also:
Works
Novels
- The Shaving of Shagpat: An Arabian Entertainment [1856]
- The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of a Father and Son / with an introduction by Frank W. Chandler [1859]
- Evan Harrington [1861]
- Rhoda Fleming / George Meredith [1865]
- Vittoria [1867]
- The Adventures of Harry Richmond [1871]
- Beauchamp's Career [1875]
- The Egoist [1879]
- The Tragic Comedians [1880]
- Diana of the Crossways [1885]
- Sandra Belloni [[Emilia in England, 1864]; 1887]
- One of our Conquerors [1891]
- Lord Ormont and his Aminta [1894]
- The Amazing Marriage [1895]
- Celt and Saxon [unfinished, 1910]
Short fiction
- Farina [1857]
- The House on the Beach [1877]
- The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper [1877]
- The Tale of Chloe : an episode in the history of Beau Beamish [1879]
- The Gentleman of Fifty and the Damsel of Nineteen [unfinished]
Drama
Poetry
- Poems [1851]
- Modern Love [1862]
- Poems from the volume entitled “Modern Love” / George Meredith [1862]
- Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth [1883]
- Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life [1887]
- A Reading of Earth [1888]
- Poems : the Empty Purse, with odes to the comic spirit, to youth in memory, and verses / George Meredith [1892]
- Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History [1898]
- A Reading of Life : with other poems [1901]
- Last Poems [1909]
- Scattered Poems
- The Sage Enamoured and the Honest Lady