George Meredith, The Adventures of Harry Richmond

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TheAdventures 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

GreatExpectations

; 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 wisdom and maturity after being buffeted between the influences of his traditional English grandfather and his adventurer father like a…

3633 words

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

10362 The Adventures of Harry Richmond 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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