Diana of the Crossways - Complete

Diana of the Crossways is one of George Meredith's most searching studies of female intelligence under Victorian constraint. Centred on Diana Warwick-brilliant, witty, unhappily married, and dangerously near the political world-the novel combines social comedy, psychological realism, and epigrammatic prose. Its plot of scandal, loyalty, and public reputation reflects the era's anxieties about marriage law, women's autonomy, and the porous boundary between private life and political power. Meredith, a major late-Victorian novelist and poet, was deeply interested in the "woman question" and in the moral evasions of respectable society. His own difficult experiences of marriage and his sympathy for intellectually gifted women helped shape Diana's complexity. The heroine is often associated with Caroline Norton, whose life as a writer, political hostess, and campaigner against marital injustice clearly informed Meredith's imaginative treatment of social persecution. This complete edition is recommended for readers who value demanding, idea-rich fiction: the sentences are dense, brilliant, and sometimes challenging, but they reward attention. Admirers of Eliot, James, and Trollope will find here a sharper, more paradoxical comedy of manners, animated by a heroine whose wit and vulnerability remain strikingly modern.