Rossetti insistently exhorted by George Meredith to come forth into the glorious sun and wind for a walk to Hendon and beyond. by Max Beerbohm. Plate 13, Rossetti and His Circle, 1922.
Meredith, as Jacqueline Banerjee points out, "was as passionate about nature as any of those more exclusively categorised as 'Country Writers.' Throughout his adult life, until stopped by paralysis in old age, one of his great joys was to tramp for miles along the ancient roads of his adopted home county of Surrey. But his observations went not into letters (like Gilbert White's), reports (like Cobbett's) or essays (like Richard Jefferies). Instead, they went into his novels and poetry. Thus, among the many contradictions and surprises in his work are the quintessentially English settings so often chosen by this most flamboyant and eccentric of writers — complete with the fir knolls, juniper slopes, gravel cuttings and weirs with which he was most familiar. ["George Meredith's Surrey Settings"]
[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one. — George P. Landow]
Bibliography
Beerbohm, Max. Rossetti and His Circle. London: William Heinemann, 1922.
Last modified 18 May 2006