Novels.—­Meredith’s novels comprise the largest and most noteworthy part of his writings.  His most important works of fiction are The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), The Egoist (1879), and Diana of the Crossways (1885). The Ordeal of Richard Feverel is the story of a beautiful first love.  The courtship of Richard and Lucy, amid scenes that inspire poetic descriptions, is in itself a true prose lyric.  Their parting interview is one of the most powerfully handled chapters to be found in English novels.  It is heart-rending in its emotional intensity and almost faultless in expression. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, like most of Meredith’s works, contains more than a love story.  Many chapters of high-class comedy and epigrammatical wit serve to explode a fallacious educational theory.

The Egoist has for its special aim the portrayal and exposure of masculine egotism.  This was a favorite subject with Meredith and it recurs frequently in his novels.  The plot of The Egoist is slight.  The interest is centered on the awakening of Clara Middleton and Laetitia Dale to the superlative selfishness of Sir Willoughby’s egotism.

Scintillating repartee, covert side-thrusts, shrewd observations, subtle innuendoes, are all used to assist in the revelation of this egotism.  One fair April morning, after his return to England from a three years’ absence, Sir Willoughby met Laetitia Dale, an early sweetheart whom he no longer loved.

“He sprang out of the carriage and seized her hand.  ’Laetitia Dale!’ he said.  He panted.  ’Your name is sweet English music!  And you are well?’ The anxious question permitted him to read deep in her eyes.  He found the man he sought there, squeezed him passionately, and let her go.”

The delicate irony of this passage is a mild example of the rich vein of humor running through this work. The Egoist is the most Meredithian of the author’s novels, and it displays most exuberantly his comic spirit, intent upon photographing mankind’s follies.  This book has been called “a comedy in narrative.”

Diana, the heroine of Diana of the Crossways, is the queen of Meredith’s heroines.  She is intellectual, warm-hearted, and courageous.  She thinks and talks brilliantly; but when she acts, she is often carried away by the momentary impulse.  She therefore keeps the reader alternately scolding and forgiving her.  Her betrayal of a state secret, which cannot be condoned, remains the one flaw in the plot.  With this exception, the story is absorbing.  The men and women belong to the world of culture.  Among them are some of Meredith’s most interesting characters, notably Redworth, the noblest man in any of the novels.  The scene of the story is in London’s highest political circle and the discussions sparkle with cleverness.

Evan Harrington (1861), the story of a young tailor, is one of the lightest and brightest of Meredith’s novels.  It presents in the author’s most inimitable manner a comic picture of the struggle for social position.  In two of the characters, Great Mel and Mrs. Mel, are found the pen portraits of Meredith’s grandparents. Rhoda Fleming (1865) is in its style the simplest of his novels.  The humble tragedy is related in the plain speech of the people, without the Gaelic wit usually characteristic of Meredith.