MEREDITH, GEORGE British novelist and poet, was born at Portsmouth, Hants., on Feb. 12, 1828. About his early life little is recorded, but there is a good deal of quasi autobiography, derived apparently from early associations and possibly antipathies, in some of his own novels, notably Evan Harrington and Harry Richmond. He had, as he said, both Welsh (from his father) and Irish blood (from his mother) in his veins. His father, Augustus Armstrong Meredith, was a naval outfitter at Portsmouth (mentioned as such in Marryat's Peter Simple) ; and his grandfather, Melchisedek Meredith, clearly suggested the "Old Mel" of Evan Harrington. Melchisedek was 35 when, in 1796, he was initiated as a freemason at Portsmouth; and he appears to have been known locally as "the count," because of a romantic story as to an adventure at Bath ; he was church warden in 18o1 and 1804; and some of the church plate bears his name.
Meredith's mother died when he was three years old, and he was made a ward in chancery. He was sent to school, at Neuwied on the Rhine, and remained in Germany till he was 16. During these impressionable years he imbibed a good deal of the German spirit ; and German influence, especially through the media of poetry and music, can often be traced in the cast of his thought and sentiment, as well as in some of the intricacies of his literary style. Returning to England he was at first articled to a solicitor in London, but he had little inclination for the law, and soon abandoned it for the more congenial sphere of letters, of which he had become an eager student. At the age of 2 I he began to con tribute poetry to the magazines, and he eked out a livelihood for some years by journalism, on the Daily News and other London papers, and for the Ipswich Journal, for which he wrote leaders; a certain number of his more characteristic fugitive writings are collected in the memorial edition of his works (19o9-11). In London he became one of the leading spirits in the group of young philosophical and positivistic Radicals, among whom were John (afterwards Lord) Morley, Frederic Harrison, Cotter Morison and Admiral Maxse. But during the years when he was producing
his finest novels he was practically unknown to the public. In 1849 he married Mrs. Nicholls, daughter of Thomas Love Pea cock, the novelist, a widow, eight years his senior, whose husband had been accidentally drowned a few months after her first marriage (1844), and who had one child, a daughter; but their married life was broken by separation; she died in 1861, and in 1864 Meredith married Miss Vulliamy, by whom he had a son and daughter. His second wife died in 1885. Up to that time there is little to record in the incidents of his life; he had not been "discovered" except by an "honourable minority" of read ers and critics. It must suffice to note that during the Austro Italian War of 1866 he acted as special correspondent for the Morning Post; and though he saw no actual fighting, he enjoyed, particularly at Venice, opportunities for a study of the Italian people which he turned to account in several of his novels. To wards the close of 1867, when his friend John Morley paid a visit to America, Meredith undertook in his absence the editor ship of the Fortnightly Review for Messrs. Chapman and Hall. They were not only the publishers of his books, but he acted for many years as their literary adviser, in which capacity he left a reputation for being not only eminently wise in his selection of the books to be published, but both critical and encouraging to authors of promise whose works he found himself obliged to reject. Thomas Hardy and George Gissing were among those who expressed their grateful sense of his assistance. He was indeed one of the last of the old school of "publishers' readers." In his early married life he lived near Weybridge, and later at Copsham between Esher and Leatherhead, while soon after his second marriage he settled at Flint cottage, Mickleham, near Dorking, where he remained for the rest of his life.