Meredith, George

Poet and novelist, born in Hampshire; began his literary career 1851 as a poet, in which capacity he has since distinguished himself and given expression to his deepest personal convictions, but it is chiefly as a novelist he is most widely known and is generally judged of; as a novel-writer he occupies a supreme place, and is reckoned superior in that department to all his contemporaries in the same line by the unanimous consent of one and all of them; his novels, however, appeal only to a select few, but by them they are regarded with unbounded admiration, some giving preference to this and others to that of the series; "The Ordeal of Richard Feveril," published in 1859, is by many considered his best, though it is over "The Egoist" that Louis Stevenson breaks out into raptures; Meredith has most sympathetic insights into nature and life, has a marvellous power in analysing and construing character, and shows himself alive to all the great immediate interests of humanity; b . 1828.