Evan Harrington - Complete eBook

George Meredith was born on February 12, 1828, in Portsmouth, England. Coming from a family tailoring business, he was able to attend a local seminary thanks to a small fortune from his mother, who died when he was five, and thus adopt the role of a young "gentleman" at a young age. However, later, due to the collapse of the tailoring business, he quickly became aware of the disparity between this position and his true socioeconomic level. Meredith began composing poetry in his early twenties and participated in the publication of... Monthly Observer, a privately circulated literary magazine to which he submitted his own poems and critical articles. He married Mary Nicolls in 1849 after a tumultuous romance, but the marriage was neither pleasant nor lasting, due in part to Meredith's difficult financial circumstances. Initially finding no success as an author, he was forced to accept employment as a manuscript reader for a publishing house and as a writer of editorials and news for a provincial newspaper. His own writing had to be done in his remaining free time. However, his works were forward-looking and centered on the transformation of society. He was an influence on other authors as well as an encourager. He was nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Meredith's works are notable for their psychological character analyses and a profoundly subjective perspective on life that, well ahead of his time, saw women as true equals to men.