19 h 12 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
In these drawing rooms, good manners leave plenty of room for vanity, pride and self-deception.
Complete Short Works of George Meredith brings his watchful mind into the space of shorter fiction. In country houses and drawing rooms, well-bred people deceive themselves. Meredith looks past their polished manners to the thoughts behind a choice, finding comedy in the gap between what people feel and what they admit.
These pieces explore comedy, private choices and the pressure of society. Class, money, rank and marriage arrangements shape private feeling, while wit exposes pride without turning to anger. Meredith's prose asks for attention: metaphors, compressed phrases and sudden turns make the reading demanding. The reward lies less in fast action than in watching a mind reveal itself.
What you’ll discover
- Comedy that sees clearly Discover wit that does more than raise a laugh, bringing vanity and false feeling into view.
- Minds at a turning point Watch what happens inside a person at the moment a choice takes shape.
- Manners under scrutiny Enter drawing rooms where rank, reputation and marriage arrangements press upon private lives.
- Language worth lingering over Meet dense prose whose metaphors and sudden turns invite a slower, more attentive reading.
- Meredith on a smaller scale Try his dry, psychological fiction in pieces you can finish in one sitting.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy witty narrators, comic portraits of vanity, courtship plots, Rhine legends, sharp political essays and eyewitness war reports, and anyone curious about how an English novelist thought about laughter.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A Rhine romance of arrows and devils
- A general who fears clever women
- A beau protects a dairymaid duchess
- A vain bailiff meets an old friend
- Two voices, one river, and a fifty-year-old heart
- A widow, a suitor and a wily uncle
- Politics and war in print
- Why comedy needs equal minds
- One voice behind many tales
Who’s who
- FarinaA poor, dreamy Cologne student who loves Margarita and will follow a monk, a squire and a Water Lady to win her.
- Margarita GroschenThe bold White Rose of Germany, a merchant's daughter who sings ballads, sews Siegfried and knows her own mind.
- Guy the GoshawkA cheerful English squire with a huge appetite and a dependable staff, who befriends Farina and fights for fair play.
- General OpleA retired soldier with silver hair and a shy heart, who wants a quiet gentlemanly life and gets a clever neighbour.
- Lady CamperA rouged, witty earl's niece with a sketchbook and pistols who rules her neighbours and means to settle her nephew's future.
- Beau BeamishThe self-appointed king of the Wells, who guards manners with wit and means to shield a young duchess from harm.
- ChloeA gifted, generous woman who gave up her fortune for love and now watches over a duchess while she waits for a promised man.
- Martin TinmanA thrifty bailiff of Crikswich who dreams of a Court address and will do almost anything to be thought important.
Formats and delivery
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 19 h 12 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 15 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Obras breves completas de George Meredith
A poor student and a hungry squire ride to free the White Rose of Cologne from a robber baron.
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In short
This is a gathering of the shorter works of George Meredith, who died in 1909. It holds a romance of the Rhine, three comic tales of English manners, an unfinished story told in two voices, an unfinished stage comedy, newspaper essays, letters from a war, and his famous lecture on comedy.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A Rhine romance of arrows and devils
The first tale, The White Rose Club, is set in Cologne in the age of the Kaisers. Gottlieb Groschen is the richest merchant in the city. His daughter Margarita, called the White Rose of Germany, has a band of young men sworn to her honour. They wear scars like medals and drink beer by the barrel. Their leaders, Dietrich Schill and Berthold Schmidt, fight each other for the captaincy.
One young man will not join. Farina is poor, quiet, and rumoured to study the black arts, so the Club distrusts him. In the vineyard Margarita offers Dietrich a bunch of grapes, and he dares not take it. Farina kneels and offers some in return. Margarita laughs, and everyone can see where her heart lies. Her aunt Lisbeth, who sees the devil in every cameo, sets herself against the match.
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What is in the Complete Short Works of George Meredith?
It gathers a Rhine romance, three comic tales of English manners, an unfinished fragment told in two voices, an unfinished stage comedy, newspaper essays, war letters from 1866 and the lecture On the Idea of Comedy.
What is The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper about?
A shy retired general proposes to a rouged, witty neighbour who says she is seventy. When their quarrel over money ends the courtship, she sends him pen and ink caricatures that follow him around the neighbourhood.
Is On the Idea of Comedy easy to follow?
Yes in the sense that it speaks clearly about people. Meredith explains comedy through familiar examples such as Molière, Fielding and Aristophanes, and he tells small stories, such as the professor who asks his opponent whether he knows that the professor is a philologist.
The author
George Meredith
1828–1909 · English novelist and poet
George Meredith was a British novelist and poet born in Portsmouth, England, in 1828. He published his first poetry collection in 1851 and the novel The Amazing Marriage in 1895. He lived at Box Hill in Surrey from 1867 until his death in 1909.
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