MEREDITH, GEORGE. – English narrator and poet, b. at Portsmouth on 13 February 1828, d. on 19 May 1909 at Box Hill (Surrey). He married the daughter of the novelist T. S. Peacock, who was already a widow, and the marriage was extremely unhappy, ending in divorce and, later, in the woman’s suicide. From this sad episode arose Modern love, a series of fifty sonnets regarded by some modern critics as the writer’s masterpiece for its psychological acuity and technical daring. As a narrator and as a poet, M. is certainly more brilliant but also less solid and less profound than his contemporary Thomas Hardy.
Few writers can more justly be described as cerebral, although, unlike James, he was not an innovator in narrative technique. His works’ narrative rhythm is made novel by the abuse of epigrams and maxims, and by the ostentation of vivacity and unconventiality; M.’s dialectic is certainly admirable, but, since it is not applied to the profound problems of human life, it proves somewhat disproportionate. The author rejected every form of Christianity, contenting himself with replacing it by a vague idolatry of nature and outdoor life and by rather insubstantial ideologies, celebrating the emancipation of women in the name of progress not defined in concrete terms, and without truly confronting social problems. To the “comic spirit,” which he regarded as a reagent and a leaven in the narrator’s work, he assigned an exaggerated and even cathartic function and, although he employed it with great skill, made excessive and overly overt use of it in his work (for, unlike Dickens, he was not a born humorist), and remains a writer read and admired by few. Among his major novels are The egoist (1871), which is his masterpiece; Vittoria (1866), set during the Milanese revolution of ’48; and Diana of the crossways (1855), on the emancipation of women.