A Victorian Immersed in His Times:

...I am not in touch with the English mind," he wrote in a private letter in 1904, and he added that this was "a matter to be regretted, but not complained of...

...For those who know Meredith well, A Troubled Eden is filled with stimulating suggestions and a host of blasted myths...

...Reviewed by Herman Ausubet Associate Professor of History, Columbia University George Meredith is so distinctively a man of the last part of the 19th century that his dates come as a surprise...

...The result is a sympathetic portrait of Meredith as thinker and artist that should encourage readers to discover or rediscover for themselves the glories of The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Modern Love, The Egoist and many other works...

...Meredith liked to hear that readers approved of what he wrote and was grateful to them when they told him so...

...But—and this is an important clue to an understanding of Meredith —there were few things that he enjoyed...

...In fact, the author goes so far as to nominate one of Meredith's lines for the distinction of being the worst line of English poetry ever written...

...Meredith, in short, began as a pre-Victorian, lived most of his life as a Victorian and ended as an Edwardian...

...It was typical of him that, when a friend of his was to be married, he did not wish her happiness but the power to put up with the blows of life...

...Like many of his contemporaries in the Victorian world of letters, he enjoyed being immersed in the life of his times...

...He died in 1909, the year of the Old Age Pension Law and the struggle over David Lloyd George's People's Budget...

...It was only in the last years of his life that he won the critical attention and acclaim that he craved, and even then he was often, to his deep hurt, caricatured...

...Kelvin argues that Meredith was preoccupied with the themes of nature and society, and in chronological order he ingeniously traces the treatment of these ideas in the English author's novels and poetry...

...The social and political changes that took place during his lifetime, both in Britain and Europe, were staggering...

...He was a profoundly melancholy man who suffered from a deepseated sense of failure...

...Such books as Lionel Stevenson's The Ordeal of George Meredith, Jack Lindsay's George Meredith: His Life and Work and now Norman Kelvin's A Troubled Eden—to say nothing of dozens of articles in scholarly and literary journals— have reinterpreted him and his work for our time...

...As he grew older he more and more considered himself intellectually isolated, even an outcast...

...And when he was asked to lend the prestige of his name to aid a humanitarian cause, he often hesitated, doubting that his support would help...

...He was born as long ago as 1828, a year before Catholic Emancipation and four years before the passage of the Great Reform Act...

...During the past decade, however, Meredith has certainly come into his own...

...It supplies the required background material, both biographical and historical, and it is levelheaded and fairminded...

...Meredith sympathized with many of these changes, and he used them in an impressive way in his novels and poetry...

...But during his productive decades he rarely received as much reassurance and recognition as he needed...

...Kelvin does not neglect Meredith's weaknesses: his sometimes absurd syntax and imagery...

...Kelvin's book is particularly valuable as an introduction for readers unfamiliar with Meredith...

...At the same time, however, he keeps Meredith's weaknesses in perspective by focusing on the whole artist...