Meredith, GEORGE, novelist and poet, was born in Hampshire, 12th February 1828, and made his first appearance as a poet with 'Chillianwallah' in Chambers's Journal for July 1849. This was followed in 1851 by a little volume of Poems, and in 1855 by The Shaving of Shagpat: an Arabian Entertainment, a highly original tale, in burlesque imitation of the manner of the Eastern story-teller. It shows a rich and brilliant imagination, and abounds in passages of tender feeling as well as of boisterous humour, but the incidents are involved and the machinery complicated, and reading is also made difficult by tantalising suggestions of hidden meanings which constantly elude one's grasp. In 1857 appeared Farina: a Legend of Cologne, a short story, reflecting the influence of German romance, which it partly imitates and partly parodies. The series of Mr Meredith's greater and more characteristic works began in 1859 with The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of a Father and a Son, a tragic romance, dealing with the larger problems of education, especially in its ethical aspects. The novel of Evan Harrington, an amusing comedy of social ambitions, followed in 1861. Modern Love, and Poems of the English Roadside, with Poems and Ballads, was published in 1862, 'Modern Love' being the title of a sequence of fifty sonnet-like poems which tell their story in a somewhat fragmentary manner, but with great truth of observation and strength of pathos. Emilia in England (1864), since 1886 known as Sandra Belloni, has for its subject one of Meredith's most fascinating and original characters; it is continued in Vittoria (1866), the scene of which is laid in Italy at the time of the political risings of 1848. In 1865 had appeared Rhoda Fleming, like Richard Feverel a tragedy; the romantic Adventures of Harry Richmond followed in 1871. Beauchamp's Career (1875) is perhaps the most perfectly constructed of all the series. The Egoist (1879) is a searching and remorseless study of a single aspect of refined selfishness. The Tragic Comedians (1881), originally published in the Fortnightly Review, is a somewhat close rendering of the well-known painful story of Lassalle's tragic end, founded upon the reminiscences of the Countess Racowitza. Diana of the Crossways (1885) is also based on actual history. Other novels are One of our Conquerors (1891), Lord Ormont and his Aminta (1894), and The Amazing Marriage (1895). Mr Meredith, who was literary reader for Chapman & Hall for over thirty years, began to issue a revised edition of his novels in 1896. He is LL.D. of St Andrews (1892). Three volumes of poetry are Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth (1883), Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life (1887), and A Reading of Earth (1888).
Though it be admitted that Meredith is the foremost novelist of the day, and one of the most invigorating and stimulative thinkers of his generation, it can by no means be said that he is the most widely read. This distinction he has, that 'among the crowd of persons of taste and understanding who agree to crown Meredith a royal writer, his most resolute partisans are those of his own household—journalists, poets, and novelists, students of the art of fiction and practitioners of the noble English tongue.' Among the elements of his power may be enumerated his wide, accurate, and sympathetic observation both of nature and of life, his inventive resource, his analytic and synthetic power, and his mastery of words. His descriptions of scenery are varied, vivid, and full of poetry, his delineations of phases of feeling, and especially of tender feeling, those of a master. Few writers have created so many characters of ideal beauty, who are at the same time so thoroughly human and marked by the strongest individuality—real, breathing, talking personalities, whom the reader feels it a joy to have known. Among the 'defects of his qualities' may be mentioned a certain intricacy of plot, or rather perhaps want of clearness in working it out, arising from an exaggerated reticence; also a frequent over-elaboration of style and strainedness of wit that fatigues rather than exhilarates. And, though he is never 'sensational,' there is often a certain disregard of probability in the situations he invents. It is believed that Mr Meredith is, for the present at least, more extensively read by men than by women; and this, if a fact, may perhaps be partly accounted for by the purpose which he has so deliberately expressed, and so consistently carried out, of bringing philosophy into the domain of fiction. Much of his writing deals more or less directly, in a serious manner, with the most important problems of politics, sociology, and ethics. It is in his poetry that his deepest views of life really find their directest and most elementary expression. There is a study by Le Gallienne, George Meredith: some Characteristics, with a bibliography by John Lane (1890).