Meredith G
Name: George Meredith
Achievements: Major Victorian novelist
Born: 12th February 1828, Portsmouth, Hampshire, England.
Died: 18th May 1909, Box Hill, Surrey, England. Aged 81.
Field & Discipline: Literature; Writer; Poet
Language: English.
Father:: Augustus Urmston Meredith (1797-1876)
Mother: Jane Eliza Macnamara (m. 1823)
Siblings: None
Spouse: 1) Mary Ellen Nicolls (m. 1849-59); 2) Marie Vulliamy (m. September 1864)
Children: by Nicolls: Arthur Gryffydh Meredith. By Vulliamy: William Maxse; Marie Eveleen
Education: St. Paul's Church School, Southsea; boarding schools; Moravian School, Neuwied, Germany (1842-44)
Major Work:
“The Egoist” (1879)
Life & Times:
In 1846, eighteen months after he graduated from school, Meredith was articled to Richard Stephen Charnock, a young London solicitor, for training in the legal profession. Charnock was a sociable, educated man with an interesting circle of friends, among whom Edward Peacock, son of the well-known eccentric author Thomas Love Peacock.
Through Edward, Meredith met his sister, Mary Ellen Nicolls, a widow seven years older than he and the mother of a five-year-old girl. At the age of twenty one, without any profession or social position and with only a very small estate by maternal inheritance, he proposed and they were married on 9th August 1849. After a honeymoon on the Rhine, they moved to Weybridge, Surrey.
Meredith and his wife planned to support themselves by writing. He had already contributed poems, articles and translations to the Charnock manuscript and “Chambers Edinburgh Journal” published his poem “Chillianwallah” (1849), inspired by a battle in the Second Sikh War.
Poems by Meredith appeared in [published by] Dickens'* magazine “Household Words,” and his first volume of poetry, entitled “Poems,” came out in 1851. The volume gained him some exposure and good reviews, especially from fellow writers and poets William Michael Rossetti, [good review from] Kingsley* and [good review from] Tennyson*. “Poems,” however, was a commercial failure and since Meredith had paid the publication costs of 60 pounds, his financial situation deteriorated badly.
Poetry did not pay, so Meredith, now entirely supported by his wife and her father, turned his hand to prose. He wrote a fantasy entitled “The Shaving of Shagpat: An Arabian Entertainment,” published in 1855. The novelist [good review from] George Eliot*, at that time still writing reviews for the “Westminster Review” and “The Leader” under her real name, Marian Evans, praised it as "a work of genius, and of poetical genius.”
Meanwhile, Meredith's marriage was coming to an end. Frustrated by being the bread-winner and impatient with her husband's impractical aspirations, Mary eloped to Capri in 1858 with a young Pre-Raphaelite painter, Henry Wallis, and in 1859 gave birth to his child.
Meredith took charge of his five-year-old son, Arthur, and refused to see his wife again, even though she returned to England in hope of a reconciliation. Meredih’s next work, “The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,” published in 1859 and became one of his most widely read novels, but banned from libraries because it included a seduction scene.
Meredith was next employed by the publisher Chapman and Hall to read and comment on the manuscripts of authors including [reviewed work of] Thomas Hardy*.
In his spare time he continued to write and produced his second novel, “Evan Harrington” in 1860. This novel was not very successful, but Meredith was now financially a little better off, his income boosted by work as editorial writer for the “Ipswich Journal,” and as a "gentleman reader" to a wealthy woman.
In 1861, on his return from a vacation with his son in Switzerland and Italy, Meredith found that his wife had returned to England, where she died in October. Her death caused him to re-examine the stormy course of their marriage and to cast his experiences into a sequence of sonnet-like stanzas. The result was “Modern Love,” published as “Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads” in 1862.
Through [a pal of] Swinburne*, Meredith became intimate with the Pre-Raphaelite circle, but an attempt at a communal menage with Swinburne and [lived with] Dante Gabriel Rossetti* and his brother William Michael, lasted only a few months (1861-62) and was marked by frequent quarrels.
In 1864, at the age of thirty six, Meredith found new happiness in marriage to Marie Vulliamy. She was a well-educated young woman with no literary aspirations of her own. In 1865 a son, William Maxse, was born and in 1871, a daughter, Marie Eveleen.
With a family to support and popularity still elusive, Meredith had to keep hard at work for the next fifteen years, making very occasional walking expeditions on the Continent. In 1866, however, he was sent by “The Morning Post” to report on the Italian campaign in the Austro-Prussian War.
On his way home, Meredith spent a few days in Vienna, where he met Leslie Stephen (a friend of [knew friend of] Robert Louis Stevenson*) with whom he would remain friends throughout his life. After his return he bought Flint Cottage, near the bottom of Box Hill, Surrey, where he was to live quietly until his death.
During this period, Meredith continued his fight for fame and fortune and “Emilia in England,” later renamed “Sandra Belloni,” appeared in 1864, “Rhoda Fleming” in 1865, and a sequel to “Emilia,” entitled “Vittoria” in 1867, although these added nothing to his reputation.
“The Egoist,” the best known and most admired of Meredith's works, was published in 1879, but at the time, since its main topic was marital infidelity, it was not well received by the public.
Meredith published another volume of poetry in 1883: “Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth,” with which he finally made a name for himself as a poet. This was followed by the successful novel “Diana of the Crossways” in 1885.
His wife was now suffering from cancer and died in 1885, after a long and painful struggle. Then, in 1890, his first son Arthur died from tuberculosis. Meredith again turned to his work and produced his last three novels “One of Our Conquerors” (1891), “Lord Ormont and His Aminta” (1894) and “The Amazing Marriage” (1895). A further five volumes of philosophical poetry finally brought Meredith the literary fame he sought.
He celebrated his eightieth birthday in 1908. The world's press published articles naming him as one of the greatest contemporary literary figures, and he received congratulations from [congratulated by] President Theodore Roosevelt* and King Edward VII.
The following year Meredith died of pneumonia at his Box Hill home and was buried in Dorking Cemetery, with a memorial service at Westminster Abbey.
Extra Connections: [visited by] Chesterton* and [visited by] H. G. Wells* all visited Meredith at Box Hill in the early 1900s.
He was a fan of [a fan of] Hugo*
Criticized the writing of SW [criticized the writing of] Mitchell*
Assessment: A man who achieved his mark in literary history only after almost a lifetime of hard work.
Oneliner: George Meredith, British Victorian novellist
Bibliography:
- Muendel, Renate, George Meredith, Boston, Mass.: Twayne Publishers, 1986.