The Ordeal of Being Known

The Ordeal of Richard Feverel: A History of Father and Son is the earliest full-length novel by George Meredith, published in 1859; its subject is the inability of systems of education to control human passions. It is one of a select group of standard texts that have been included in all four of Everyman's Library (1935), the New American Library of World Literature (1961), Oxford World's Classics (1984), and Penguin Classics (1998). With its rigorous psychological analysis and criticism of contemporary attitudes toward sexuality, it has been seen by some critics as the first modern novel in English literature.