The True History of the First Mrs Meredith and Other Lesser Lives

Johnson, Diane; Gornick, Vivian (introduction)

ISBN 10: 1681374455 / ISBN 13: 9781681374451

Published by New York Review Books, New York, NY, USA, 2020

About this Item

xx, [iv], 242, [10]pp, plus a central section of black and white illustrations. Laminated stiff card covers. 8vo. Some gentle edge wear to card covers else volume is neat, clean, bright and tight throughout. Biography of George Meredith, the 19th century poet, novelist and author of Diana of the Crossways.

Seller Inventory # 041068

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The True History of the First Mrs Meredith and Other Lesser Lives
• Publisher: New York Review Books, New York, NY, USA
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1681374455
• ISBN 13: 9781681374451
• Binding: Softcover
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: N/A
• Seller catalogs:
  • Autobiography and Biography
  • Literary History and Criticism

About this title

Synopsis

A classic of alternative biography and feminist writing, this empathetic and witty book gives due to a "lesser" figure of history, Mary Ellen Peacock Meredith, who was brilliant, unconventional, and at odds with the constraints of Victorian life.

"Many people have described the Famous Writer presiding at his dinner table. . . . He is famous; everybody remembers his remarks. . . . We forget that there were other family members at the table--a quiet person, now muffled by time, shadowy, whose heart pounded with love, perhaps, or rage." So begins The True History of the First Mrs. Meredith and Other Lesser Lives, an uncommon biography devoted to one of those "lesser lives." As the author points out, "A lesser life does not seem lesser to the person who leads one." Such sympathy and curiosity compelled Diane Johnson to research Mary Ellen Peacock Meredith (1821-1861), the daughter of the famous artist Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) and first wife of the equally famous poet George Meredith (1828-1909). Her life, treated perfunctorily and prudishly in biographies of Peacock or Meredith, is here exquisitely and unhurriedly given its due. What emerges is the portrait of a brilliant, well-educated woman, raised unconventionally by her father only to feel more forcefully the constraints of the Victorian era. First published in 1972, Lesser Lives has been a key text for feminists and biographers alike, a book that reimagined what biography might be, both in terms of subject and style. Biographies of other "lesser" lives have since followed in its footsteps, but few have the wit, elegance, and empathy of Johnson's seminal work.

About the Author

Diane Johnson is a novelist and critic. She is the author of Lulu in Marrakech and Le Divorce, among other novels, and a memoir, Flyover Lives. She lives in Paris and San Francisco.

Vivian Gornick is a journalist, essayist, and memoirist. She is the author of eleven books, most recently The Odd Woman and the City. She lives in New York.