Modern Love

Book excerpt: The Victorian writer George Meredith completed Modern Love, his most famous poem, in the months following his wife’s death in 1861. The series of 16-line sonnets (a stanzaic form Meredith invented) depicts isolated scenes in an unhappy marriage as both partners take lovers. At the time, Meredith’s long poem was savaged by critics both for its style and for its “diseased” content. In this century, however, it has been lauded as a complex and extraordinarily powerful exploration of the realities of Victorian marriage.