George Meredith, The Adventures of Harry Richmond

Sue Zlosnik (Manchester Metropolitan University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.07: English Writing and Culture of the Victorian Period, 1837-1901.
Vol. editors: Gillian Fenwick (University of Toronto), Grace Moore (University of Otago)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1871

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

The Adventures of Harry Richmond (1871) is a bildungsroman told in first person narrative by its eponymous hero. In its early chapters, it has clear affinities with Dickens's David Copperfield and Great Expectations; there are echoes particularly of David Copperfield - the pervasive London fog and the schooldays with a Steerforth figure, for example. Unlike David, however, Harry is not rewarded by a home with its ‘Angel in the House'; instead, the novel ends with a burning of the ancestral home that echoes Jane Eyre and prefigures Wide Sargasso Sea and Rebecca, both classic Gothic texts by women. Thus the tale of the motherless young man achieving …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

3633 words

Citation: Zlosnik, Sue. "The Adventures of Harry Richmond". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 October 2004 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=10362, accessed 27 November 2024.]

Save this article