The Poetry of George Meredith

By: George Meredith

Narrated by: Richard Mitchley, Ghizela Rowe, Gideon Wagner

Length: 1 hr and 11 mins

Publisher's summary

George Meredith, OM, was born in Portsmouth, England on February 12th, 1828. His mother died when he was five. As a 14-year-old he was sent to a Moravian School in Neuwied, Germany, staying there for two years. After reading law he was articled as a solicitor but quickly abandoned that career path for journalism and poetry. He collaborated with Edward Gryffydh Peacock, son of Thomas Love Peacock, in publishing a privately circulated literary magazine, the Monthly Observer. At age 21 he married Mary Ellen Nicolls, Edward Peacock's beautiful widowed sister, on August 8th, 1849. Mary Ellen was 28. The marriage produced one child: Arthur (1853-1890).

Meredith collected his early writings, all previously published in periodicals, in an 1851 volume, Poems. In 1856 he posed as the model for The Death of Chatterton, a well-known picture by the English pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis, which romanticised the teenage Chatterton’s demise. Although Meredith received some publicity for this his wife received rather more attention from Wallis because of it. Mary Ellen ran off with Wallis in 1858, shortly before giving birth to a child that all assumed to be Wallis'. Tragically she died three years later. From that dreadful experience emerged a collection of sonnets entitled Modern Love in 1862 together with much of his first major novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel.

Meredith married Marie Vulliamy in 1864, and they settled in Surrey. Together they had two children: William (1865) and Mariette (1874). He had a keen understanding of comedy and his Essay on Comedy (1877) remains a reference work in the history of comic theory. In The Egoist, published in 1879, he applies some of his theories of comedy in one of his most thoughtful and enduring novels. During most of his career, he had difficulty crossing over from critical acclamation to popular success. It was only in 1885 that his first genuine commercial success appeared: Diana of the Crossways.

With an unreliable income stream he sought to bolster that with a job as a publisher's reader. The company that gave him this lifeline was Chapman & Hall. His advice to the company was very well received and made him influential in the world of letters. In 1868 Meredith was introduced to Thomas Hardy. Hardy had submitted his first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady. Meredith felt the book was too bitter a satire on the rich and told Hardy to put it aside, as it was likely it would be savaged by reviewers and destroy his nascent career. Meredith had received the same reaction with The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. Although it had brought him success, it was judged so shocking that Mudie's circulating library cancelled an order of 300 copies.

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