Poetry For Love Biography

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George Meredith

1828–1909

George Meredith was a major Victorian novelist whose career developed in conjunction with an era of great change in English literature during the second half of the nineteenth century. While his early novels largely conformed to Victorian literary conventions, his later novels demonstrated a concern with character psychology, modern social problems, and the development of the novel form that has led to his being considered an important precursor of English Modernist novels. In particular, Meredith is noted as one of the earliest English psychological novelists and as an important experimenter with narrative told from a variety of shifting, unreliable perspectives, reflecting a modern perception of the uncertain nature of both personal motivation and of social or historical events.

Meredith was born in Portsmouth, England. His father inherited a seemingly prosperous Portsmouth naval outfitters and tailor shop from Meredith's grandfather but soon discovered that one reason for the shop's popularity with customers was that delinquent bills were rarely pursued. The Merediths ran the failing business at a loss for several years while living extravagantly on the dowry that Meredith's mother had brought into the marriage. Considering themselves superior to ordinary tradespeople, the Merediths unsuccessfully attempted to establish themselves as the social equals of the elegant patrons of the tailor shop. Meredith was sent to private schools and quickly learned to say nothing of his family's position, instead encouraging the assumption that he was of the gentry. Meredith remained secretive about his origins all his life, and much is unknown about his childhood because of his unwillingness to disclose details of this period.

When Meredith was five his mother died, leaving her money in a trust for her son's education. Lacking access to these funds for his business, Meredith's father was forced into bankruptcy. The boy was sent to boarding schools and had very little contact with his father thereafter. At fourteen Meredith was sent to school in Neuwied, Germany, where he remained for two years, leaving with a love of German culture, especially music, that lasted the rest of his life. Upon Meredith's return to England, his father wanted to apprentice him to a bookseller and publisher, but Meredith, disinclined to follow the advice of a man he considered "a muddler and a fool," found a post for himself assisting an attorney, for whom he worked for five years.

As he entered his early twenties, Meredith began writing poetry, influenced in particular by John Keats and Lord Tennyson. He became acquainted with Edward Gryffydh Peacock and Mary Nicolls, the son and widowed daughter of the satirist Thomas Love Peacock, a man he admired. With the younger Peacock he collaborated on the publication of a privately circulated literary magazine, the Monthly Observer, to which he submitted his own poetry and critical essays. A tempestuous relationship with Nicolls culminated in their marriage in 1849, but the marriage was neither a happy nor a lasting one, in part due to Meredith's precarious financial situation. Although his father-in-law offered to secure him an office position, Meredith preferred to try to make his living by his pen. However, his first book, Poems, a volume published at his own expense, attracted little notice and never recouped printing costs. During the first years of their marriage Nicolls suffered several miscarriages and stillbirths, while Meredith developed nervous and digestive disorders that led him to demand a highly specialized diet. Nicolls turned this to financial advantage by writing and publishing, with her father's help, a successful cookbook. In 1853, with Nicolls again pregnant, the couple's financial difficulties forced them to move in with Thomas Love Peacock. Peacock could not adjust to the disruption of his household, which was exacerbated by the birth of the Merediths' son Arthur later that year, and he eventually quit his own house to take rooms elsewhere.

At the time of his death Meredith was considered one of England's premier men of letters. In the years since, his critical reputation has undergone several reassessments, although he has never enjoyed the resurgence in general popularity enjoyed by such Victorian novelists as Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope. Several reasons have been cited for this. Meredith's novels feature very little action, relying instead on dialogue, or what Meredith called "action of the mind," to advance the story. This resulted in a popular perception of his novels as static and "talky." However, Meredith's prose is most often identified as the barrier that makes his works inaccessible to readers. Meredith's narrative style, making extensive use of metaphor, allusion, and aphorism, has been described by his admirers and detractors alike as so difficult that close rereadings of passages are frequently necessary to extract the meaning. Some critics contend that Meredith became so enamored of his mannered style that style itself became the end of his work and not the means to tell a story. His supporters, however, praise the poetic quality of Meredith's prose, maintaining that each line of Meredith's work is written in the allusive, rich language usually reserved for poetry. Although Meredith's career has undergone several reappraisals as new generations of critics rediscover his works, the difficulties presented by his narrative style have been cited as the factor that has discouraged a resurgence of widespread interest. However, as has been true throughout the history of commentary on Meredith, there remains a dedicated group of admirers who contend, with J. B. Priestley, that Meredith's difficult style, requiring as it does the full and undivided attention of the reader, paved the way for the public acceptance of much subsequent serious fiction, helping to shape "the modern attitude towards fiction and the modern novel itself."

Poems, Parker, 1851, Scribner, 1898.
The Shaving of Shagpat: An Arabian Entertainment, Chapman & Hall, 1856, Roberts Brothers, 1887.
Farina: A Legend of Cologne, Smith, Elder, 1857.
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of Father and Son, 3 volumes, Chapman & Hall, 1859, 1 volume, Roberts Brothers, 1887, reprint edited and introduced by John Halperin, Oxford University Press (New York City), 1984.
Evan Harrington; or, He Would Be a Gentleman, Harper, 1860, 3 volumes, Bradbury & Evans, 1861.
"Modern Love" and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads, Chapman & Hall, 1862, edited by E. Cavazza, Mosher, 1891.
Emilia in England, 3 volumes, Chapman & Hall, 1864, published as Sandra Belloni, Chapman & Hall, 1886, Roberts Brothers, 1887.
(Editor and author of introduction and concluding chapters) The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter: From the Private Journals and Other Papers of Commander R. Semmes, Saunders & Otley, 1864, Carleton, 1864.
Rhoda Fleming: A Story, 3 volumes, Tinsley, 1865, 1 volume, Roberts Brothers, 1886.
Vittoria, 3 volumes, Chapman & Hall, 1866, Roberts Brothers, 1888.
The Adventures of Harry Richmond, 3 volumes, Smith, Elder, 1871, 1 volume, Roberts Brothers, 1887.
Beauchamp's Career, 3 volumes, Chapman & Hall, 1876, 1 volume, Roberts Brothers, 1887, reprint edited and introduced by Margaret Harris, Oxford University Press, 1988.
The House on the Beach: A Realistic Tale, Harper, 1877.
The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative, 3 volumes, Kegan Paul, 1879, Harper, 1879, reprint edited and introduced by Margaret Harris, Oxford University Press, 1992.
The Tragic Comedians: A Study in a Well-Known Story, 2 volumes, Chapman & Hall, 1880, 1 volume, Munro, 1881.
Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth, Macmillan, 1883, Roberts Brothers, 1883.
Diana of the Crossways, 3 volumes, Chapman & Hall, 1885, 1 volume, Munro, 1885.
Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life, Macmillan, 1887, Roberts Brothers, 1887.
A Reading of Earth, Macmillan, 1888, Roberts Brothers, 1888.
Jump-to-Glory Jane, privately printed, 1889, Sonnenschein, 1892.
The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper, Lovell, 1890.
The Tale of Chloe: An Episode in the History of Beau Beamish, Lovell, 1890.
One of Our Conquerors, 3 volumes, Chapman & Hall, 1891, 1 volume, Roberts Brothers, 1891.
Poems: The Empty Purse, with Odes to the Comic Spirit, to Youth in Memory and Verses, Macmillan, 1892, Roberts Brothers, 1892.
The Tale of Chloe; The House on the Beach; The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper, Ward, Lock & Bowdon, 1894.
Lord Ormont and His Aminta: A Novel, 3 volumes, Chapman & Hall, 1894, 1 volume, Scribner, 1894.
The Amazing Marriage, 2 volumes, Constable, 1897, Scribner, 1897.
An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit (first published in New Quarterly, 1877), Constable, 1897, Scribner, 1897.
Selected Poems, Constable, 1897, Scribner, 1897.
The Nature Poems, Constable, 1898.
Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History, Constable, 1898, Scribner, 1898.
The Story of Bhanavar the Beautiful, Constable, 1900.
A Reading of Life, with Other Poems, Constable, 1901, Scribner, 1901.
Last Poems, Constable, 1909, Scribner, 1909.
Chillianwallah, Marion Press, 1909.
Love in the Valley, and Two Songs: Spring and Autumn, Seymour, 1909.
Poems Written in Early Youth, Poems from "Modern Love," and Scattered Poems, Constable, 1909, Scribner, 1909.
Celt and Saxon, Constable, 1910, Scribner, 1910.
Up to Midnight: A Series of Dialogues Contributed to the "Graphic," Luce, 1913.
1909-11 The Works of George Meredith, De Luxe Edition, 39 volumes, Constable, Library Edition, 18 volumes, Constable, Boxhill Edition, 17 volumes, Scribner, Memorial Edition, 27 volumes, Constable, Scribner.
The Poetical Works of George Meredith, edited by G. M. Trevelyan, Constable, 1912.
The Letters of George Meredith, edited by C. L. Cline, 3 volumes, Clarendon Press, 1970.
The Poems of George Meredith, edited by Phyllis B. Bartlett, 2 volumes, Yale University Press, 1978.
Selected Poems, edited by Keith Hanley, Carcanet Press (Manchester, England), 1983.
The Adventures of Harry Richmond: The Unpublished Parts, edited with an introduction by Sven-Johan Spanberg, Almqvist and Wiksell International (Stockholm, Sweden), 1990.
Modern Love, edited and with an afterword by D. von R. Drenner, wood engravings by John DePol, Zauberberg Press, 1991.
Selected Letters of George Meredith edited by Mohammad Shaheen, St. Martin's (New York, NY), 1996.
George Meredith's Essay On Comedy and Other New Quarterly Magazine Publications: A Critical Edition edited by Maura C. Ives, Bucknell University Press (Lewisburg, PA), 1998.