George Meredith (1828-1909) was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times. After reading law and being articled as a solicitor he abandoned that profession in favour of journalism and poetry, collaborating on a privately circulated literary magazine, the Monthly Observer, with Edward Peacock, the son of Thomas Love Peacock. In 1849 he married Edward's widowed sister, Mary Ellen Nicolls, who deserted him for the Pre-Raphaelite painter Henry Wallis in 1858. Meredith had posed for Wallis's painting The Death of Chatterton in 1856. Meredith's collection of sonnets entitled Modern Love (1862) emerged from this experience, as did his first major novel, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859). In 1864 he remarried, continuing to write novels and poetry. Meredith had a keen understanding of comedy and his Essay on Comedy (1877) remains a reference work in the history of comic theory. In The Egoist (1879), one of his most enduring novels, he employs some of his theories of comedy, whilst also highlighting the subjugation of women during the Victorian period, another recurring theme in his work. The novel recounts the story of self-absorbed Sir Willoughby Patterne and his attempts at marriage. Having been jilted by his first bride-to-be, he vacillates between the sentimental Laetitia Dale and the strong-willed Clara Middleton, but more importantly the novel follows Clara's attempts to escape from her engagement, emphasizing the difficulties faced by women in Victorian society when they were too often seen as a commodity to be trafficked between fathers and husbands.

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