George Meredith’s Poetry and the Critical Imagination

This article offers an overview of criticism of George Meredith’s poetry in the last century and a half and situates Meredith’s work within current and emergent trends in Victorian studies. The first section addresses the original critical response to Meredith’s verse and the early, influential studies that serve as the basis for later scholarship, noting the emphasis on ‘Modern Love’ to the near exclusion of Meredith’s corpus beyond that poem. It then traces the reasons for these limitations, including the access problems created by the lack of current print editions of Meredith’s poetry. Next, it surveys recent additions to Meredith criticism. The article concludes by suggesting scholarly and pedagogical directions for working with Meredith’s poetry, arguing that it is particularly well suited to the interdisciplinary, neoformalist, and narratological approaches now defining Victorian poetry scholarship.