DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS. This novel by George Meredith is a penetrating study of feminine character in its marital and social relations. Diana, as Meredith proclaims, is °a positive heroine, with brains and real blood.)) Her youthful, loveless and unhappy marriage, her reckless plunge into the gaieties of London life,. her impulsive and disastrous association with various public men, and her final union, after the death of her first husband, with the unassuming but substantial Redworth, constitute the basis of a brilliant presentation of English society and a delicate and subtle analysis of human nature. The heroine, we are informed in one of Meredith's letters, is modeled after Mrs. Norton, a granddaughter of Sheridan, and many of Diana's experiences resemble those of her prototype. But the central incident of the novel, Diana's sale of a political secret to the editor of a famous newspaper, was founded not upon fact, but upon rumor since disproved. In spite of certain flaws and inconsistencies in the delineation of the leading character— her dereliction in the crisis of her career is never quite reconciled with her asserted intellectual discernment— the novel is one of the best bal anced of Meredith's contributions to English fiction. It is packed with thought, yet it is
entertaining; it is sparkling with wit, yet its brilliance of expression is not so excessive as to be blinding; it is epigrammatic without being cryptic. The inspiring conception of woman hood embodied in the heroine,— strong, inde pendent, courageous, witty, without sacrifice of charm and lovableness — should be pondered by all to whom the Victorian heroine is a namby pamby emotionalist. The incisive discussion in the opening chapter of sentimentalism and sham realism should be studied by all who would gain discriminatioq in the judgment of fiction. An incomplete version, the basis of certain American editions, ran in The Fort nightly Review from June to December 1884. The enlarged and completed work was published in 1885. Consult Meredith's (Letters.) edited by his son (London 1912) ; Henderson, M. Sturge. Meredith' (London 1907) • The Nation (Vol. XCV, p. 306; ib., pp. 328 329).