Literary Birthday – 12 February – George Meredith

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

Seven 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 and Diana of the Crossways, and his Essay on Comedy was considered an important contribution to Victorian literary theory. Meredith was apparently 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).

 by Amanda Patterson

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