George Meredith (12 February 1828 – 18 May 1909) was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. At first, his focus was poetry, influenced by John Keats among others, but Meredith gradually established a reputation as a novelist. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) briefly scandalised Victorian literary circles. Of his later novels, the most enduring is The Egoist (1879), though in his lifetime his greatest success was Diana of the Crossways (1885). His novels were innovative in their attention to characters' psychology, and also portrayed social change. His style, in both poetry and prose, was noted for its syntactic complexity; Oscar Wilde likened it to "chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning". The Prose of Oscar Wilde, New York: Cosimo Classics, 2005, p. 378. Meredith was an encourager of other novelists, as well as an influence on them; among those to benefit were Robert Louis Stevenson and George Gissing. Meredith was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times.
Augustus Meredith was, as Melchizedek Meredith had been before him, a naval outfitter, and among his employees was James Watson Gieve. Jane died when her son was five, and the outfitting business failed, with Augustus declared bankrupt in November 1838. He moved to London and in July 1839 remarried – his second wife being the family's former housekeeper, Matilda Buckett.Stevenson, The Ordeal of George Meredith, p. 9.
George Meredith was educated in Southsea until 1840, when a legacy from his mother's sister, Anna, made it possible for him to attend a boarding school in Lowestoft, Suffolk. In August 1842 he was sent to the Moravian Church School in Neuwied, near Koblenz, where he remained until the spring of 1844; Lionel Stevenson argues that the experience instilled his "impatience towards sham and servility, contempt for conceit, admiration for courage, and devotion to candid and rational forthrightness".Stevenson, The Ordeal of George Meredith, pp. 14–15.
By 1845 it was planned that he would be articled to a solicitor, Richard Charnock of Paternoster Row, and he was duly articled in February 1846, shortly before his eighteenth birthday. But he abandoned the legal profession for journalism and poetry, taking lodgings in Pimlico.Stevenson, The Ordeal of George Meredith, pp. 10–23, 27.
Drawn to literary circles, Meredith collaborated with Edward Gryffydh Peacock, son of Thomas Love Peacock, in publishing a privately circulated literary magazine, the Monthly Observer. One of the contributors was Edward Peacock's sister Mary Ellen Nicolls. Described by the artist William Holman Hunt as "a dashing type of horsewoman who attracted much notice", Mary was the widow of a naval officer, Lieutenant Edward Nicolls, who in 1844 had drowned while attempting to rescue a man under his command.
In August 1849 Meredith married Mary, at St George's, Hanover Square. At the time of the marriage, Meredith was 21 years old; she was 28 and had a five-year-old daughter by Lieutenant Nicolls (born after his death).Margaret Harris, "George Meredith", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ( ODNB). Augustus Meredith was not present at the wedding, having emigrated to South Africa in April of that year.Stevenson, The Ordeal of George Meredith, p. 29.
The Merediths' circumstances were precarious, and Mary had more than one miscarriage before in 1853 giving birth to a son, Arthur Gryffydh. At the time the couple were living with her father in Lower Halliford (today part of Shepperton). Following the birth, Peacock rented a house for them, across the village green from his home.Description and photographs of Vine Cottage at Victorian Web
Fatherhood heightened Meredith's belief that he must press ahead with his writing career, resulting in what would eventually be his first substantial work of prose fiction, The Shaving of Shagpat. An allegorical Arabian fantasy, it was written in imitation of "the style and manner of the Oriental story-tellers", but sprang "from no Eastern source".Stevenson, The Ordeal of George Meredith, pp. 45–47. The book attracted little notice when published, in 1856, though it was praised by George Eliot for its "poetical genius". ODNB. The following year he published Farina, subtitled "A Legend of Cologne", a work in the comic-grotesque vein that was described by The Athenaeum's critic as "a full-blooded specimen of the nonsense of Genius" and a "lively, audacious piece of extravaganza". George Eliot, in The Westminster Review, called it "an original and an entertaining book", but it inevitably suffered from her reviewing it alongside Madame Bovary and Barchester Towers.Stevenson, The Ordeal of George Meredith, pp. 56–7.
Meredith's first major novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, emerged from his experience of the collapse of his marriage and shocked many readers with its sexual frankness. His collection of fifty sonnets entitled Modern Love (1862) also traces the decline of a marriage and has been described by Dorothy Mermin as "a curiosity of Victorian literature" and "a point of intersection between Victorian poetry and the Victorian novel"; "in a very real sense novelistic", it is notable for its "psychological realism" and "extreme subjectivity".Dorothy M. Mermin, "Poetry as Fiction: Meredith's Modern Love", English Literary History, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Spring 1976), pp. 100–119.
In 1861 he published Evan Harrington, a novel which deals with class, manners and mimicry. It upset his father, living at the time in Cape Town, who complained: "I am pained beyond expression, as I consider it aimed at myself." The novel, according to the critic Richard Cronin, "recklessly betrays family confidences" and constituted a "treacherous burlesque of his own family's history, but also ... a love letter to his family".Richard Cronin, George Meredith: The Life and Writing of an Alteregoist, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, p. 59.
He also attempted to complete a play, entitled The Sentimentalists, which he had begun in 1862. He would never finish it, but after his death J. M. Barrie chose to weave together the various drafts to create a one-act comedy. This was performed alongside two short pieces of Barrie's during a season of work at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1910 – a project driven by Harley Granville-Barker.Eric Salmon, Granville Barker: A Secret Life, Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1984, p. 129.
Meredith's keen understanding of comedy was articulated in his Essay on Comedy (1877). Originally delivered as a lecture at the London Institution, it remains a reference work in the history of comic theory, having influenced analysts of comedy such as Joseph Wood Krutch. The essay was in effect preparation for The Egoist, published in 1879, which applies some of his theories, in particular his idea of comedy as "the ultimate civiliser". He followed it with The Tragic Comedians (1880), which was written quickly and without great conviction.
Popular success did not come easily to Meredith. The Egoist was a turning point inasmuch it brought him widespread critical recognition. One of several of his works which highlight the subjugation of women during the Victorian period, it was considered by W. E. Henley, who reviewed it in at least four publications and possibly as many as seven, to make him "a companion for Balzac and Richardson, an intimate for Henry Fielding and Cervantes". The critic for the New Quarterly Magazine commented, "We pay Mr Meredith a high compliment when we say he enables the reader to understand what is meant by Comedy, in the best and fullest sense of the word."L. T. Hergenhan, "Meredith Achieves Recognition: The Reception of Beauchamp's Career and The Egoist", Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Fall 1969), pp. 1247–1268.
His most commercially rewarding novel was Diana of the Crossways, published in 1885, which attracted notice because of its relationship to real-life events involving Caroline Norton and Lord Melbourne. Margaret Harris explains that "like many of Meredith's novels, Diana contains commentary on the aims and techniques of fiction, made particularly potent by Diana's being herself a novelist dedicated to 'reading the inner as well as exhibiting the outer'". George Gissing wrote to his brother, "By hook or crook, get hold of Diana of the Crossways. The book is right glorious. Shakespeare in modern English", and William Cosmo Monkhouse wrote in the Saturday Review that "amongst all his intellectual and literary feats, Mr Meredith has, perhaps, never accomplished one more striking".Quoted in Stevenson, The Ordeal of George Meredith, p. 259. Diana was his first book to make an impression in America.Richard Burton, Masters of the English Novel, Frankfurt: Outlook, 2019, p. 160.
His friends in the literary world included, at different times, William and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Cotter Morison,Meredith's place in the circles of Rossetti, Swinburne, Morison, Sir Alexander Duff-Gordon and Sir William Hardman is described in S. M. Ellis, A Mid-Victorian Pepys, The Letters and Memoirs of Sir William Hardman, M.A., F.R.G.S (Cecil Palmer, London 1923), which includes an early photograph of George Meredith with his son Arthur Meredith, facing p. 50. Leslie Stephen, Robert Louis Stevenson, George Gissing and J. M. Barrie.
Gissing wrote in a letter to his brother Algernon that Meredith's novels were "of the superlatively tough species".Letters of George Gissing to members of his family, collected and arranged by Algernon and Ellen Gissing. London: Constable, 1927, letter dated 12 June 1884. His contemporary Sir Arthur Conan Doyle paid tribute to him in the short story "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", in which 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 "The Art of Novel-Writing" reflected, "Ah, Meredith! Who can define him? ... As a writer he has mastered everything, except language ... Too strange to be popular, too individual to have imitators, ... he stands absolutely alone." The Prose of Oscar Wilde, p. 378.
In 1868 Meredith was introduced to Thomas Hardy by Frederic Chapman of Chapman & Hall. 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 own 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 in his attempts to publish the novel, without success, though he clearly took Meredith's advice seriously.Tomalin, Claire. Thomas Hardy: The Time Torn Man. New York: Penguin, 2007.
His books were translated into Japanese and influenced author Natsume Sōseki.
Nine of his novels were republished in 1885–6, priced at six shillings each, which made them accessible to a wider audience, and from 1889 they appeared in an edition priced 3s. 6d.. Meredith was moved to joke to James Payn, editor of the Cornhill Magazine, that his "submerged head was strangely appearing above the waters in England".Philip Waller, Writers, Readers, and Reputations: Literary Life in Britain 1870–1918, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 892.
He continued to publish new novels, including One of our Conquerors (1891), an experimental portrait of a troubled marriage, and Lord Ormont and his Aminta (1894), which depicts a woman breaking free from a humiliating marriage and re-establishing her self-worth through a new relationship. The latter contains a sketch of a school that resembles the one he attended in Neuwied. The Amazing Marriage (1895), melodramatic yet closely concerned with modern questions of psychology and gender, was the last of his novels to be published in his lifetime; Celt and Saxon, an unfinished early work which took a keen interest in the relationship between race and ideology, appeared posthumously in 1910.
Marie died of throat cancer in 1885, lauded by Meredith as "the most unpretending, brave and steadfast friend ever given for a mate". In later life he was troubled by ailments which restricted his mobility. Explanations for this have included locomotor ataxia and osteoarthritis.
Before his death, Meredith was honoured from many quarters: in 1892 he succeeded Tennyson as president of the Society of Authors; that year there was an honorary doctorate from the University of St Andrews; and at a dinner in his honour in 1895 Thomas Hardy and George Gissing paid tribute to his achievements and his influence on them. Max Beerbohm's caricature for Vanity Fair, published in 1896 and captioned "Our First Novelist", was an indication of Meredith's standing at that time; Beerbohm thought him, Shakespeare apart, the greatest English literary figure.J. G. Riewald, Max Beerbohm's Mischievous Wit, Assen: Van Gorcum, 2000, p. 101.
In 1905 he was appointed to the Order of Merit, which had recently been established by Edward VII. He was invested with the Order at Flint Cottage in December of that year, at a small ceremony performed by the King's representative, Sir Arthur Ellis.Stewart Marsh Ellis, George Meredith: His Life and Friends in Relation to His Work, New York: Haskell House, 1971, p. 310.
In 1909, he died at home in Box Hill. His ashes were buried alongside Marie's in the cemetery at Dorking, Surrey. Dorking Museum
In 1912 Constable & Co. published Letters of George Meredith in 2 volumes. (first edition, 1912)
Early on, critics noted his indebtedness to two writers in particular: Thomas Carlyle and Robert Browning. Stevenson notes that the triad "soon became a critical cliché." Some critics felt that he was more influenced by the former than the latter, including George Pierce Baker, who asked: "May not Mr. Meredith be called the Carlyle of fiction?"
His novels, far from being action-packed, are instead driven by what he called "action of the mind", and the large amounts of dialogue have led to their being dismissed as "talky". Poetry Foundation page on Meredith. See also Margaret Harris, "'The Fraternity of Old Lamps': Some Observations on George Meredith's Prose Stye", Style, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Fall 1973), pp. 271–293. Critic Neil Roberts describes "the often irritating but profoundly original world of Meredith's novelistic art", noting that these are two sides of "the sense of the new" in his work and that this is "still felt by readers encountering Meredith today". Roberts argues that Meredith's use of dialogue and multiple voices make him "a Mikhail Bakhtin novelist par excellence".Neil Roberts, Meredith and the Novel, Houndmills: Macmillan, 1997, pp. 1, 6.
His prose, aphoristic and allusive, has often been seen as a barrier to comprehension, with some critics arguing that the style, rather than being a means to an end, serves as an end in itself. Oscar Wilde's description of "chaos illumined by brilliant flashes of lightning" has been echoed by many others. A recurring objection is the mental effort required to decipher his meaning. "Readers," writes Vanessa L. Ryan, "complained that Meredith made too constant an appeal to thoughtfulness ... and charged his writing with too many ideas and mental abstractions."Vanessa L. Ryan, Thinking Without Thinking in the Victorian Novel, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012, p. 127.
However, admirers since George Eliot have applauded the poetic qualities of Meredith's prose. For Max Beerbohm, he "packs tight all his pages with wit, philosophy, poetry, and psychological analysis". Yet even an enthusiast as fervent as Beerbohm can concede that "His obscurity, like that of Carlyle and Browning, is due less to extreme subtlety than to the plethoric abundance of his ideas". Victorian Web page on Meredith's style.
In a thesis published in Meredith's lifetime, Leah Durand Jones commented that his style is "generally conceded to be more subtle and abstruse, more complex and intricate than that of any other modern writer": he "usually avoids the conventional", achieves "independence of thought and expression" through the "brilliancy of his epigrams", finds "analogies in the most unexpected places", and possesses a "power of compression" which can disconcert readers, not least through a "constant omission of pronouns, relatives, or even nouns and verbs" that demands "swiftness of comprehension".Leah Durand Jones, thesis on "The Psychology of George Meredith's Style", Drake University, 1908, pp. 3, 6, 10, 18, 22, 28.[6] More recently, Matthew Sussman argues that Meredith's style exemplifies the virtue of "fervidness," which synthesizes two opposing impulses in the author's mind: "the first, identified with metaphor and epigram, gravitates toward the philosophical intensity of poetic condensation, while the second, identified with plotting and syntax, seeks the imaginative freedom of discursive prose."Matthew Sussman, Stylistic Virtue and Victorian Fiction: Form, Ethics, and the Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, p. 145.
As a poet, Meredith has drawn both praise and criticism for his innovation in metrical and stanzaic forms, along with his unorthodox syntax and metaphors. But his poetry is more varied than many assessments recognise; noting the tendency to overlook the pessimistic poetry Meredith produced after Modern Love and until the 1880s, Arthur L. Simpson explains that "The contrast between the derivative Romanticism of the early poems and the evolutionary naturalism of those published after 1880 is striking", and notes, of Meredith's work in the 1860s and 1870s, that "The tensions and polarities of the poems of this period bear comparison to those in the poetry of the early Alfred Tennyson, of Matthew Arnold, and of the Hopkins of the terrible sonnets."Arthur L. Simpson, "Meredith's Alien Vision: 'In the Woods'", Victorian Poetry, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer, 1982), pp. 113–123.
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