The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Meredith, George

Born Feb. 12, 1828, in Portsmouth; died May 18, 1909, at Box Hill, near London. English writer. Son of a tailor.

In Meredith’s first novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), the natural instincts of man come into conflict with the demands of society. All his later works, which developed in the mainstream of critical realism, were dominated by this conflict. Among his novels are Evan Harrington (1860), The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1870-71; Russian translation, 1870), Beauchamp’s Career (1874-75; Russian translation, 1876), The Egoist (1879; Russian translation, 1894), The Tragic Comedians (1880; Russian translation, 1912), and One of Our Conquerors (1891). The driving force in his novels is directed at the exposure of egotism and the hypocrisy of bourgeois England. At the end of his life Meredith devoted himself almost exclusively to poetry.

WORKS

Works, vols. 1-34. London, 1896-1911.
Works. Memorial edition, vols. 1-27. New York, 1909-11.
Letters, vols. 1-3. London, 1970.
In Russian translation:
Egoist. Moscow, 1970.

REFERENCES

Urnov, M. V. Na rubezhe vekov. Moscow, 1970.
Lindsay, J. G. Meredith, His Life and Work. London [1956].
Beach, J. W. The Comic Spirit in G. Meredith. New York, 1963.
Meredith Now: Some Critical Essays. London [1971].

I. B. KANTOROVICH

Mentioned in

References in periodicals archive

(1) George Meredith, Modern Love, in Modern Love and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads, ed.

The Search for a Good Cause in George Merediths Modern Love

In his 1906 critical analysis, The Poetry and Philosophy of George Meredith, George Macaulay Trevelyan, noted Victorian critic, (3) devotes seven pages of text to summarizing "The Day of the Daughter of Hades." While his annotations interspersed with long quotes from the poem help the reader to gain a better understanding of this complicated poem, his unease with critically engaging the text suggests that the poem is solely important in terms of its plot and narrative qualities.

Navigating liminal spaces: a rediscovery of Meredith's "The Day of the Daughter of Hades"

These previous settlers included her father-in-law, George Meredith, and her husband Charles, who from an early age had been set to work on his father's property.

Making Tasmania home: Louisa Meredith's colonizing prose

George Meredith's Modern Love was condemned with such virulence when it first appeared in 1862 that it came to be seen as a threat to the moral well-being of the nation.

The Victorian sonnet, from George Meredith to Gerard Manley Hopkins

One boy, a George Meredith, chose the theatre for his subject and I will remember his opening line - 'It looks like a factory from afar.' He received no marks and a right rollicking from the master but I've remembered and agreed with him every time I have visited the theatre since.

From the mouths of babes

Foote clearly influenced George Meredith. In Hardy's Jude Marsh finds echoes of both Foote and Thomas Pooley, a genuinely obscure Cornish laborer jailed for blasphemy.

Joss Marsh, Word Crimes: Blasphemy, Culture, and Literature in Nineteenth-Century England

As George Meredith put it so well in The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, "Kissing don't last: Cookery do!"

ANYONE FOR PEANUTS SOUP?

The Amazing Victorian: A Life of George Meredith. Mervyn Jones.

GEORGE MEREDITH AND THE PERILS OF MODERNITY

Adventurous George Meredith, 12, tumbled more than 200ft after slipping as he attempted a dangerous climb.

DAD SEES HIS SON, 12, FALL TO DEATH ON 11,000ft PEAK

Harman's next subject, George Meredith, might not seem to qualify as a male author of a "feminine political novel." But Harman's title refers to works that portray women's struggles in the public sphere.

The Feminine Political Novel in Victorian England

The reputation of George Meredith remains uncertain.

Meredith and the Novel