SOURCE: Muendel, Renate. “Meredith's Poetry.” In George Meredith, pp. 16-46. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1986.

In the following excerpt, Muendel gives an overview of Meredith's poetry apart from Modern Love, emphasizing Meredith's concern for aesthetic philosophy. She characterizes Meredith as a clumsy, overwrought poet in much of his work, and reserves highest praise for his earlier poetry.

To the general reader, Meredith is known as a novelist, not as a poet. Only a few of his poems are accessible in modern anthologies, and only Modern Love appears occasionally in critical discussions of Victorian verse. Meredith would not have been surprised by this neglect of his poetry because he found the audience of his own time imperceptive and indifferent to his poetic achievement, but he would have been distressed since he always hoped for a more understanding future generation. He considered his poetry superior to his prose fiction. He had an...