Switch to English Switch to French

The Open University  |   Study at the OU  |   About the OU  |   Research at the OU  |   Search the OU

Listen to this page  |   Accessibility

the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

Reading Experience Database UK Historical image of readers
  RED International Logo

RED Australia logo


RED Canada logo
RED Netherlands logo
RED New Zealand logo

Listings for Author:  

George Meredith

 

Click here to select all entries:

 


  

George Meredith : 

'In 1898 Armstrong organised the Ashington Debating and Literary Improvement Society, and his reading broadened out to Shakespeare, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Byron, Whitman, Wordsworth, Scott, Robert Browning, Darwin and T.H. Huxley. Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly had introduced him to a more liberal Nonconformity that was hospitable to contemporary literature. The difficulty was that the traditional Nonconformist commitment to freedom of conscience was propelling him beyond the confines of Primitive Methodism, as far as Unitarianism, the Rationalist Press Association and the Independent Labour Party. His tastes in literature evolved apace: Ibsen, Zola. Meredith, and Wilde by the 1890s; then on to Shaw, Wells, and Bennett; and ultimately Marxist economics and Brave New World'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Chester Armstrong      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : 

'Rose... remembers her father reading to them - Dickens, Scott, Robinson Crusoe, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Meredith, Tom Jones, The Three Musketeers, Don Quixote, and, curiously, The Origin of Species'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Macaulay      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : 

'In the Star [Philip] Ballard read the music criticism of Bernard Shaw, and Richard le Gallienne on books... He pressed on to Meredith and Walter Pater'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Philip Ballard      Print: Book, Unknown

  

George Meredith : [unknown]

'The son of a barely literate Derbyshire collier recalled a sister, a worker in a hosiery factory, who was steeped in the poetry of Byron, Shelley, Keats and D.H. Lawrence. Their mother's reading "would astonish the modern candidate for honours in English at any university", he claimed. "Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgeniev, Dumas, Hugo, Thackeray, Meredith, Scott, Dickens, all the classics, poetry etc., all these gave her immense joy".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group:      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Novels

'... Helena Swanwick recalled one exception from among the succession of inadequate domestic servants who passed through her household in the 1890s: "The best I had in those years was a young Welshwoman, who read the novels of Meredith ... and enjoyed them ..."'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group:      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Modern Love

'At one poetical evening [at Wilfrid Blunt's home Crabbet Park], when the guests included A. E. Housman and Desmond MacCarthy ... Wilfrid [Meynell] was requested to read George Meredith's Modern Love. This he did, with running commentary ...'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Meynell      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Lord Ormont and his Aminta

"[George] Meredtih's penultimate novel, Lord Ormont and his Aminta (1894), was, [Henry] James told Edmund Gosse [in letter of 22 August 1894], 'unspeakable' ... he could proceed only at 'the maximum rate of ten pages -- ten insufferable and unprofitable pages, a day'."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : The Egoist

'[R. L. Stevenson] ... nominated ["The Egoist"], together with a couple of Scott's novels, a Dumas, Shakespeare, Montaigne, and Moliere, as one of that handful of books which ... he read repeatedly -- four or five times in the case of "The Egoist", he declared in 1887.'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Louis Stevenson      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Modern Love

"[Wilfrid Scawen] Blunt was a great admirer of [Meredith's] Modern Love and, though he only read it thirty years after its publication when Meredith sent him a copy in 1892, Blunt was accused of plagiarising it in his own Songs of Proteus (1884)."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : The Egoist

"Lady Cynthia Asquith ... believed [as she recorded in her diary] that 'Meredith is very good for reading aloud.' On 10 March 1916 she tested this proposition by reading 'Mamma [Countess Wemyss] two chapters of The Egoist after dinner: she fell asleep'."

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Cynthia Asquith      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : poem

"... Lady Cynthia [Asquith] was gratified to learn that, found in his pocket when Billy Grenfell was killed in battle in 1915 was a Meredith poem, copied out for him by his mother, Lady Desborough."

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Desborough      

  

George Meredith : The Egoist

"At the age of 18 Violet Asquith ... tackled The Egoist, which 'I thought brilliant. The first 3 pages made me so angry by their obscureness ... that I nearly left off ... but I possessed myself with patience & loved the rest....'"

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Violet Asquith      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : 

'[Davies said] "Before I was twelve I had developed an appreciation of good prose, and the Bible created in me a zest for literature", propelling him directly to Lamb, Hazlitt's Essays and Ruskin's The Crown of Wild Olives. Later... he joined the library committee of the Miners' Institute in Maesteg, made friends with the librarian, and advised him on acquisitions. Thus he could read all the books he wanted: Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall, economic and trade union history, Fabian Essays, Thomas Hardy, Meredith, Kipling and Dickens'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: D.R. Davies      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : 

'Wil John Edwards...pursued Gibbon, Hardy, Swinburne and Meredith. His reading was suggested by the literary pages of the Clarion, the librarian at the Miners' Institute (who directed him to Don Quixote) and [guidance from fellow pit workers].'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Wil John Edwards      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : [unknown]

Elizabeth Morrison, "Serial Fiction in Australian Colonial Newspapers": " ... the short novel A Woman's Friendship ... owes much to [Ada] Cambridge's reading of George Eliot, George Meredith, Henry James, and William Dean Howells ..."

Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Ada Cambridge      Print: Unknown

  

George Meredith : 

''"My masters... in poetry, were Swinburne and Meredith among the living, Rossetti, Matthew Arnold and Robert Browning among the lately dead. To these I would add Edward Fitzgerald... In prose, the masters were Stendhal, Flaubert, Villiers del'Isle-Adam, Guy de Maupassant, Prosper Merimee and Walter Pater".'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: John Masefield      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Lord Ormont and His Aminta

Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 22 August 1894: " ... I have vowed not to open Lourdes [by Zola] till I shall have closed with a furious bang the unspeakable Lord Ormont, which I have been reading at the maximum rate of ten pages -- ten insufferable and unprofitable pages, a day ... I have finished, at this rate, but the first volume ..."

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : The Shaving of Shagpat: An Arabian Entertainment

'Read the Shaving of Shagpat'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Eliot [pseud.]      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Letters

Henry James to Edmund Gosse, 10 October 1912: 'I have received within a day or two dear old George Meredith's "Letters"; and, though I haven't been able yet very much to go into them, I catch their emanation of something so admirable, and, on the whole, so baffled and so tragic. We must have some more talk of them -- and also of Wells's book ["Marriage"], with which I am however having much difficulty. I am not so much struck with its hardness as with its weakness and looseness, the utter going by the board of any real self respect of composition and expression.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry James      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : [unknown]

'Brooks loved literature, and during their long walks together he introduced Willie to the most important contemporary English writers: the theological works of Cardinal Newman, the witty novels of George Meredith, the "Imaginary Portraits" of Pater, the rapturous poetry of Swinburne and Fitzgerald's sensual translation of "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam".'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: John Ellingham Brooks      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Evan Harrington

'In discussing Meredith's "Evan Harrington" (1861) in a letter to Campbell, Arthur reveals his Victorian-orientated interst in the autobiographical element in novels: "... there is really a wonderful sympathy & tenderness towards the suffering Lady Dunstane. Does it not seem as if she may be, at least in some points, his wife? I should like to think so."'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Symons      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : [unknown]

'As I began to mend, the Governor, to keep me from brooding too much, gave orders that I was to have all the reading matter I wanted within the limits of the prison library, and my book changed just as often as I liked and at any hour of the day. To a man eager to improve his acquaintance with standard literature such a privilege was immeasurably great, and for the next six weeks or so I browsed among the Victorian novelists - Austin [sic?], the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Meredith, Lytton, Kingsley, Reade, Hughes, Trollope and others.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Stuart Wood [pseud?]      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Evan Harrington

'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Vittoria

'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Rhoda Fleming

'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Harry Richmans

'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : The Egoist

'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Diana of the Crossways

'I am anxious for the day when your English will be good enough for you to enjoy Meredith, Hardy, Locke and other great authors. The works of Meredith and Hardy are quite on another plane to what you have read so far. I shall never forget my first Meredith. It was "Richard Feverel". It was quite a revelation to me as to what a book might be. Every other Meredith I have supremely enjoyed. As far as I can remember I have read "Evan Harrington", "Vittoria", "Rhoda Fleming", "Harry Richmans","The Egoist", "Diana of the Crossways". I do not know which I like the best, I found every one absolutely finer that any other books. His style is exceedingly difficult, in fact it is bad because it is obscure, but do not doubt his greatness. He is great, very great, in spite of his style. He is not a novelist for the general public. You have to be a man of letters, even although only in embryo, to enjoy him. I think I have nearly all his works but I must some day get his biography of Professor Seccombe. I like Seccombe's style so much. you will meet articles of his in the "Bookman."'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arthur Vanson      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Letters vol 1

'Moreover I have been reading Meredith's letters - undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of English literature -especially the 1st vol.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : letters

Virginia Woolf to Violet Dickinson, 11 April 1913: '[italics]I've[end italics] never met a writer who didn't nurse enormous vanity, which at last made him unapproachable like Meredith whose letters I am reading -- who seems to me as hard as an old crab at the bottom of the sea'.

Unknown
Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf      

  

George Meredith : The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

Leonard Woolf to Lytton Strachey, 2 August 1911: 'Les Freres Karamazov is one of the greatest of novels [...] Have you read it? & the extraordinary speech of Ivan about Christ & Christianity & socialism which goes on without stopping for about 50 pages? I am halfway through. The Agamemnon is childish compared to it. I read it in trains & on steamers in inextricable fjords & on great lakes, very slowly, as befits it, in perpetual sunshine; I shall never finish it I think or perhaps it will never end. And Edgar [Woolf] is always sitting by me reading the Ordeal of Richard Feverel [...] We went up the coast from Gotenberg towards Norway [...] Then we wandered up a fjord to a detestable town called Uddevala [...] Then we took a toy steamboat & sailed over the lake [...] to Leksamd & thence here [Raatvik]. It was pleasant to sit on deck reading Les Freres at the rate of a page an hour, gliding past the shores from which the fair haired naked men & women perpetually waved their hands to us.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Edgar Woolf      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Evan Harrington

'Impossible to read a Meredith as simply and fairly as a Fielding, with one eye fixed on the author's interests and the other on his achievement. [read Tom Jones & Evan Harrington when I had chicken pox, 19, and felt this strongly]'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Diana of the Crossways

'He [George Gissing] seems to have read Hardy's novels as they appeared and, impressed by "Diana of the Crossways", re-read Meredith in the important first collected edition which began to appear in the same year, that is in 1885'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : [novels]

'He [George Gissing] seems to have read Hardy's novels as they appeared and, impressed by "Diana of the Crossways", re-read Meredith in the important first collected edition which began to appear in the same year, that is in 1885'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: George Gissing      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : 

'In respect of contemporary novels he [Tennyson] had a very catholic taste. Latterly he read Stevenson and George Meredith with great interest: also Walter Besant, Black, Hardy, Henry James, Marion Crawford, Anstey, Barrie, Blackmore, Conan Doyle, Miss Braddon, Miss Lawless, Ouida, Miss Broughton, Lady Margaret Majendie, Hall Caine, and Shorthouse. He liked Edna Lyall's Autobiography of a Slander, and the Geier-Wally by Wilhelmina von Hillern; and often gave his friends Surly Tim to read, for its "concentrated pathos." "Mrs Oliphant's prolific work," he would observe, "is amazing, and she is nearly always worth reading."'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson      Print: Unknown

  

George Meredith : 'Love in a Valley'

From F. T. Palgrave's 'Personal Recollections' of Tennyson: 'In G. Meredith's first little volume he was delighted by the "Love in a Valley" (as printed in 1851: the text in later issues has been greatly changed)'.

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : 

'How they [Mrs Ward and her brother William Arnold] would talk, sometimes, about the details of her craft, about Jane Austen, or Trollope or George Meredith! For this latter they both had a feeling akin to adoration, based on a knowledge not only of his novels but of his poems (then not a common accomplishment); and I remember W.T.A. once saying to me that he thought the jolliest line in English poetry was Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: William Arnold      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : 

'How they [Mrs Ward and her brother William Arnold] would talk, sometimes, about the details of her craft, about Jane Austen, or Trollope or George Meredith! For this latter they both had a feeling akin to adoration, based on a knowledge not only of his novels but of his poems (then not a common accomplishment); and I remember W.T.A. once saying to me that he thought the jolliest line in English poetry was Gentle beasties through pushed a cold long nose'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Richard Feverel

'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Egoist, The

'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Vittoria

'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Beauchamp's Career

'[Letter from Mrs Ward to the Society of Authors when that body recommended Herbert Spencer not George Meredith for the Nobel Prize] If Mr Meredith had written nothing but the love scenes in "Richard Feverel"; "The Egoist"; and certain passages of description in "Vittoria" and "Beauchamp's Career", he would still stand at the head of English "dichtung" [the quality Mrs Ward thought the prize should reward] There is no critic now who can be ranged with him in position, and no poet. As a man of letters he is easily first; to compare Mr Spencer's power of clear statement with the play of imaginative genius in Meredith would be absurd - in the literary field'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Augusta Ward      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : [novels]

'Another pilgrimage Mrs Cragie made was to see George Meredith at his house on Box Hill. To visit Meredith was a great privilege and I waited eagerly for her description of the hour she spent with him. I was disappointed when she was able to tell me very little about the conversation. I had read all his novels and devoured the poems with great enthusiasm'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : [poetry]

'Another pilgrimage Mrs Cragie made was to see George Meredith at his house on Box Hill. To visit Meredith was a great privilege and I waited eagerly for her description of the hour she spent with him. I was disappointed when she was able to tell me very little about the conversation. I had read all his novels and devoured the poems with great enthusiasm'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Zoe Procter      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Evan Harrington

'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Beauchamp's Career

'Moby Dick'. The present vogue of Hermann Melville is mainly due to two English novelists, Frank Swinnerton and myself. We both of us have great opportunities for publicity and 8 or 10 years ago, in the Reform Club, we decided to convince the world that 'Moby Dick' was the greatest of all sea-novels. And we did! There is a lot more of Melville that you ought to read, if you have not already read it. Some of the ‘Piazza Tales’ are wonderful. And the novel 'Pierre', though while mad and very strange and overstrained, is really original and remarkable. Some of the still stranger books I have not yet read or tried to read. The trouble is that the esoteric books can only be obtained in the complete edition of the works. Happily I possess it. I believe that the original editions of 'Typee' and 'Omoo' are much better than the current editions, which have been expurgated. Please note that I think 'Evan Harrington' is better than 'Beauchamp’s Career' and 'The Woodlanders' better than the 'Mayor of Casterbridge'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : 

'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Diana of the Crossways

'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Diana of the Crossways

'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Walter Rowntree      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : [two poems]

'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : [poetry and prose]

'Geo Meredith's Diana of the Crossways was the subject of the evening. H.M. Wallis read an essay on the work of Geo Meredith as a whole & also two pieces of his poetry. This gave rise to considerable discussion. W.J. Rowntree gave a resume of Diana of the Crossways illustrated by copious extracts from the book & other members also read from the book & his poems'.

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Members of the XII Book Club     Print: Book

  

George Meredith : 

'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Henry Marriage Wallis      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : 

'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Stansfield      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Richard Feverel

'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Katherine Evans      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : Egoist, The

'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Robson      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : 'Juggling Jerry'

'The evening was devoted to Meredith. H.M. Wallis read a most interesting paper upon Meredith's works. This gave rise to considerable discussion. Mrs Evans read from Richard Feverel. Mrs Robson - The Egoist. C.E. Stansfield introduced us to the poems of Meredith. The evening closed with the reading of [Jerry in another hand] the Juggler by C.I. Evans. This poem came as a pleasant surprise after the more obscure & difficult poems to which we had been introduced & should certainly encorage some of us to dig deeper into his poetical works.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Charles Evans      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : The Egoist

'Am reading Meredith's Egoist. C. [David Lloyd George] said he was afraid it would lessen my love for him, as he throws such a clear light on the male character. C. says that Meredith has just such an insight on character as the physician has on your body when he puts the electric light arrangement on his forehead. C says too that Meredith was the first to conceive the revolt of woman — the revolt against the accepted relations of husband and wife, that is to say.'

Century: 1850-1899 / 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: David Lloyd George      Print: Book

  

George Meredith : The Egoist

'Am reading Meredith's Egoist. C. [David Lloyd George] said he was afraid it would lessen my love for him, as he throws such a clear light on the male character. C. says that Meredith has just such an insight on character as the physician has on your body when he puts the electric light arrangement on his forehead. C says too that Meredith was the first to conceive the revolt of woman -- the revolt against the accepted relations of husband and wife, that is to say.'

Century: 1900-1945     Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Stevenson      Print: Book

 

Click here to select all entries:

 

   
   
Green Turtle Web Design