Introduction

Abstract

In a controversy over whether to admit Meredith to the Cambridge English syllabus, two fundamental questions were raised in the pages of the Times Literary Supplement in 1960.¹ The first question was the extent to which Meredith’s novels are Victorian. André Gomme placed him among ‘the more Victorian Victorians’, and consequently suggested that one of his novels would be just enough for undergraduates ‘to find out for themselves why they cannot afford the time for more’. The second question was raised by W.J. Lucas, who, in response to this antipathy, asked Gomme which novel he would have them read pointing out that Meredith’s fiction varies from one novel to another. He concludes: ‘It could as well be argued that one has only to read “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” to see that Yeats is a minor poet of a singularly unrewarding kind.’