The Egoist
A Comedy in Narrative
by George Meredith 1828–1909
The book, and the century it came out of.
Sir Willoughby Patterne is handsome, rich, generous and admired, and the novel is the slow, exact demonstration of what it is like to be engaged to him. Meredith’s style won him more admirers among writers than readers — he worked for years as a publisher’s reader — and here the difficulty pays: nobody has ever anatomised male vanity so completely, and Clara Middleton’s attempts to get free are as tense as any thriller. Illustrated with 60 full-page plates — paintings by Chaplin, Giraud and Degas among them.
Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the drawing room of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire, no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing.
The Egoist, by George Meredith, complete and unabridged. Spelling and punctuation follow present-day American usage; the sentences, the paragraphs and the voice are the author’s, word for word.
It was written in another era and may carry attitudes a reader today will find dated. They are kept for the sake of the work and do not reflect the views of this house.
- Series
- Literary Classics
- Format
- Ebook
- Extent
- about 576 pages
- Reading time
- about 12 hours
- Illustrations
- Full-page plates, credited
- Text
- Complete, unabridged
- Language
- en
- This edition
- 2026
- ISBN
- 9785501184534
60 paintings are bound into this edition
Six of them are shown here, taken from the volume itself. Each is reproduced full page and named with its painter and year.
A page from this edition
Not a mock-up: this page is taken from the finished volume. The ornament above the chapter belongs to its shelf and to no other, the opening letter is set as a drop capital, and the plate below carries the name of the painter and the year.
Both photographed from the finished volume.
The Egoist, first published 1879, issued in this edition by Aeneas Press in 2026 on the Literary Classics shelf. Newly set, with the ornament of its series above each chapter and a drop capital on the opening page. Illustrated with full-page plates, each named with its painter.
Published as an ebook and not issued in print by this house; it carries one ISBN, 9785501184534, and is supplied worldwide. This edition — its setting, its ornament, its cover art, and the selection and attribution of its plates — © 2026 Aeneas Press.
Questions readers ask
- Is this the whole of The Egoist?
- Yes — complete and unabridged. Nothing is cut, condensed or paraphrased. This is the book, not a summary of it.
- What exactly did you change?
- The spelling and the punctuation follow present-day American usage. George Meredith's sentences are untouched — same words, same order, same rhythm.
- Are the pictures really in the book?
- Yes. The edition carries full-page plates bound into the text, each one named with its painter and the year it was made. Six of them are shown on this page.
- How long is it?
- About 576 pages, which is roughly about 12 hours of reading.
- What do I actually get?
- An illustrated ebook with its own ISBN, sold worldwide. One file, yours to keep, readable on any device.
