The Ordeal of Richard Feverel George Meredith 9781541132313 Books
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George Meredith was an English novelist and poet during the Victorian era. Meredith was a prolific writer and he stood out as one of the great authors of comedy of his time. With classics such as The Egoist, Diana of the Crossways, and The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, Meredith remains a popular author today. The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, published in 1859, is a philosophical novel on the shortcomings of the educational systems in their ability to control human passions. The action starts out with Richard's mother deserting her family in order to be with a poet. Richard's father, believing that schools are corrupt, educates him at home.
The Ordeal of Richard Feverel George Meredith 9781541132313 Books
This is one of the greatest English novels. Even when it was first published, all the reviewers agreed it was hard to read, so see if you like the wit and sarcasm of a page or two before you start it. If you like one page, you'll like them all. The story is not so much about how the father's educational system fails his son, as it is about how every uncle, aunt, and cousin Richard Feverel has, along with his father, loves him and tries to bring him up well, but finally fails because of life's unpredictability, the power of sex, and their own deadly prejudices. The ending is a little bit less melodramatic than THE GREAT GATSBY's, and the two books are similar in showing what happens to a rich rebel against the values of the very rich. It mixes comedy and tragedy, which was a first, and Meredith apologised for boring his readers. He was a pro. But if you're lucky enough not to be bored by this book, you'll get deeper into the Victorian upper class than any other book can take you, or even dares to take you.Product details
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Tags : The Ordeal of Richard Feverel [George Meredith] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. George Meredith was an English novelist and poet during the Victorian era. Meredith was a prolific writer and he stood out as one of the great authors of comedy of his time. With classics such as The Egoist,George Meredith,The Ordeal of Richard Feverel,CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,1541132319,FICTION Classics
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The Ordeal of Richard Feverel George Meredith 9781541132313 Books Reviews
I don't think it's something you'd want to read for its own sake unless you have a particular interest in the development of the novel in in the nineteenth century. The plot concerns the efforts of Sir Austin Feverel to prevent his son's marriage and then to break it up. There are ponderous attemps at humor. A tragic and melodramatic ending is tacked on. The story is often difficult to follow, with characters being assigned different names. Jane Austen had already shown how a a tight light novel could be constructed. Madame Bovary had been written (for the diffference between mediocrity and genius compare the descriptions of the food at the wedding breakasts in this and in Madame Bovary). This has the clumsy baggy long-winded structure of Dickens (who was writing Great Expectations at the sme time) but without the great characters and confrontations. This was popular literature in its time, and considered scandalous.
tough to get into - but an old classic
I first read this about 60 years ago and liked it. Not so much now. It does not seem to go anywhere.
One of Meredith's great novels, which you'll want to read immediately after you finish THE EGOIST, assuming you want to read more of him at that point.
THE ORDEAL OF RICHARD FEVEREL is one of George Meredith's masterpieces. It is the story of a bright and strong-willed young man who must make his own way in the world despite the misguided advice of an overbearing father who has treated his only child as a kind of experiment. Of course, nothing goes according to plan. The author gives us a wealth of delicious social satire as well as a brilliant and mirthful meditation on the infinitely complicated relations between men and women. Meredith's genius was to know the human animal through and through, and to find him/her pleasing despite myriad defects. Moreover, he writes with great generosity and compassion, even as he makes us laugh at his characters. This book will be a delight to anyone who is a fan of the Victorian novel. It should be appealing to readers in the twenty-first century, too, even if the author's sometimes convoluted syntax imposes a slight challenge. Happily, George Meredith is the opposite of Daniel Steele in every way. This is a novel worth everyone's time and attention.
The other review here has to do with this particular edition (there are several editions available for this title), which was free to download, and to which I only referred as a secondary text for the purpose of highlighting and notes, for which the lately revised software is excellent. The primary text I used was a - also free to download - digitally scanned book from Google Books which is much warmer and easier to read, but which doesn't have the editing capabilities of the edition. These are simply pointers to those readers considering different editions which to download. The review shall be of the book itself.
And what a rum book it is! Let's just get the main point out of the way to wit, that the modern reader will find reading this book an ordeal in itself, so full it is of caricatures and outmoded dialects. But yet, the book - despite the ultimate tragedy it narrates - is essentially a farce, poking fun at the entire human condition from first page to last. I can quite see why the book was banned from most libraries upon its publication. It's a very droll experience for the reader to find himself taken a bit aback by very detailed descriptions of the demimonde due to having put oneself into what I suppose we should call "19th Century novel mode." One simply doesn't expect it!
What is this book about? The essential framework is that of a baronet who attempts to mould his son's upbringing by using a pseudo-scientific "System" which is really nothing more than a book of his own ad hoc aphorisms. The reader can readily see how rich a ground such an outline provides for tilling the fruits of misconceived systems as well as the imperfections in human nature, especially when the two collide, which collision could be said to be the subject of the book.
But, one more thing, George Meredith was also a - much better, in my opinion - poet, and some of his descriptive, detailed scenes remind one of nothing so much as Proust, in which the smallest things are seen to have significance. I'll leave the prospective reader with one exemplary sentence
"At present, I am aware, an audience impatient for blood and glory scorns the stress I am putting on incidents so minute, a picture so little imposing. An audience will come to whom it will be given to see the elementary machinery at work who, as it were, from some slight hint of the straws, will feel the winds of March when they do not blow. To them nothing will be trivial, seeing that they will have in their eyes the invisible conflict going on all around us, whose features a nod, a smile, a laugh of ours perpetually changes. And they will perceive, moreover, that in real life all hangs together the train is laid in the lifting of an eyebrow, that bursts upon the field of thousands. They will see the links of things as they pass, and wonder not, as foolish people now do, that this great matter came out of that small one."
Richard's ordeal is to win his freedom from the well-meaning but rigid idea of his father, Sir Austin, who is certain he knows how to raise a perfect son. The extended family and retainers provide many amusing pictures of aristocratic England. The book is a satire of some pretensions of the "Age of Reason," and a defense of the rise of "liberalism" as represented by Richard choosing a lower class wife at the risk of forfeiting his inheritance. Meredith's thought is deep, and his language is precise but complex. Sticking with it will reward you.
This is one of the greatest English novels. Even when it was first published, all the reviewers agreed it was hard to read, so see if you like the wit and sarcasm of a page or two before you start it. If you like one page, you'll like them all. The story is not so much about how the father's educational system fails his son, as it is about how every uncle, aunt, and cousin Richard Feverel has, along with his father, loves him and tries to bring him up well, but finally fails because of life's unpredictability, the power of sex, and their own deadly prejudices. The ending is a little bit less melodramatic than THE GREAT GATSBY's, and the two books are similar in showing what happens to a rich rebel against the values of the very rich. It mixes comedy and tragedy, which was a first, and Meredith apologised for boring his readers. He was a pro. But if you're lucky enough not to be bored by this book, you'll get deeper into the Victorian upper class than any other book can take you, or even dares to take you.
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