Literary Birthday – 12 February – George Meredith

George Meredith was born 12 February 1828, and died 18 May 1909.

George Meredith Quotes

1. Cynicism is intellectual dandyism.
2. Memoirs are the backstairs of history.
3. A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.
4. Speech is the small change of silence.
5. The well of true wit is truth itself.
6. The most dire disaster in love is the death of imagination.
7. Caricature is rough truth.

George Meredith was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. His novels include The Egoist, Diana of the Crossways, and The Ordeal of Richard Feverel. His Essay on Comedy was considered an important contribution to Victorian literary theory. His writing style was concise, witty, and insightful. Meredith was one of Oscar Wilde’s favourite novelists and ‘is noted as one of the earliest English psychological novelists and as an important experimenter with narrative told from a variety of shifting, unreliable perspectives’ (via).

Source for image: George Frederic Watts, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Meredith_by_George_Frederic_Watts.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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