The Ordeal of Richard Feverel

Excerpt from The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of a Father and Son
George Meredith was born in Hampshire, England, in 1828 and the early years of his student life were spent in Germany.
On his return to England he took up the study of law, but soon abandoned it in favor of a literary career. His first published work was a poem entitled "Chillianwallah," which appeared when he was twenty-one. Then followed a book of poems and some fugitive pieces. In 1859 he issued: "The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," his first novel, believed by many critics to be unsurpassed by his later work.
It is the history of the lifelong struggle between the two irreconcilable natures of a father and son. The father is a "Scientific Humanist," the slave of the "System" which he has evolved for his son's up-bringing and conduct of life, while the son, high-strung and fine-tempered, is broken on the wheel of the other's inexorable plan. The story interest is more vital than in most of Meredith's latter work, while the love passages are among the most charming and subtle in the language.
Meredith has been much criticized on account of his involved though logical style. But to the student of his works it is evident that this is not because he is incapable of simple direct diction, but because such is the ripe mentality of the man that each sentence and each phrase must be packed to the utmost with meaning - with each shade of thought that bears in upon the mind of this keen and humorous analyst and penetrating philosopher.
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