George Meredith*

by Austin Tappan Wright

SEPTEMBER I, I909.* TO THE EDITOR OF LIFE:      Dear Sir:—Your article upon George Meredith,* entitled “One of the Immortals,”* in your number of September 2,* has perhaps a little the tone of the baffled ignorant, who to mask his envy condemns other conditions than his own as being tainted with hypocrisy. This is not, however, the reason why I wrote to you, but rather to let you know of an astonishment—I have no doubt shared with me by many—that a periodical so able as you frequently are in your book notices should be blind to the fact that Meredith is a striking and splendid figure in modern literature.* Whether or not your statement that nobody reads or cares about him is true, certainly your reviewer cannot have failed to perceive how marked are the traces of his method and influence in the works of modern novelists, through which much of him is current in present-day writings and is eagerly devoured by a perhaps unconscious public.      It may be, however, that your article was merely the humorist’s waving of a red flag.* Your well-wisher,                     AUSTIN TAPPAN WRIGHT. CASTINE, ME.*   last section  | Contents |  Notes |  Next section “George Meredith” by Austin Tappan Wright was originally published in Life, v. 54, no. 1406, October 7, 1909, pp. 461-462. The work of Austin Tappan Wright here reproduced is in the public domain. All other material in this edition is ©2008 by Brian Kunde.