The English novelist and poet George Meredith (1828-1909) concentrated on detailed character development and witty intellectual discussion. His narrative style is often highly metaphorical, allusive, and aphoristic.

George Meredith was born on Feb. 12, 1828, in Portsmouth, the grandson of a prosperous naval tailor. George's father, brought up as a gentleman, was unable to manage a declining business successfully, but with the help of his wife's small fortune he was able to maintain genteel pretensions and indulged his son sufficiently to set him apart from other tradesmen's children. But in 1833 his father went bankrupt and moved to London, where half a year later he married his housekeeper. This episode no doubt contributed to Meredith's remarkable lifelong secretiveness about his social origins. After a few years at a school in Germany, he was, in 1845, articled to a London solicitor in whose circle he discovered a new world of racy intellectual and...