Beauchamp's Career
First edition title page
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| Author | George Meredith |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Political novel |
| Publisher | Chapman & Hall |
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Publication date
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1875 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 969 pp |
Beauchamp's Career (1875) is a novel by George Meredith which portrays life and love in upper-class Radical circles and satirises the Conservative establishment. Meredith himself was inclined to think it his best novel, and the character Renée de Croisnel was his favourite of his creations.The Penguin Companion to Literature calls it "One of the finest political novels in English."
Nevil Beauchamp is a young naval officer with high ideals of honour and public service who, having been wounded in the Crimean War, recovers his health in Venice. He there falls in love with a brilliant and high-spirited French girl, Renée de Croisnel, with whom he hopes to elope. Renée marries an elderly French aristocrat instead, and Nevil takes up his naval career again. He falls under the influence of the republican and freethinking Dr. Shrapnel, thereby alienating his wealthy uncle Everard Romfrey, a staunchly Conservative peer. Nevil stands for Parliament as a Radical, but he is defeated. Everard horsewhips Dr. Shrapnel, and refuses when an outraged Nevil demands that he apologise. Renée now returns to claim Nevil, but he has meanwhile fallen in love with a beautiful Tory, Cecilia Halkett. Nevil reconciles Renée with her husband, but Cecilia refuses Nevil's proposal. With his love life in ruins Nevil falls ill and is thought to be at death's door. Uncle Everard repents of his quarrel with Nevil and Dr. Shrapnel, and apologises at last. On Nevil's recovery he marries Dr. Shrapnel's ward Jenny. The marriage is a happy one, in spite of Nevil's not being in love with her, but after a few months Nevil dies in an attempt to save a child from drowning.
Meredith began work on Beauchamp's Career in 1871, and completed it in the spring of 1874. He submitted it to The Cornhill Magazine, which rejected it, and then to The Fortnightly Review, which agreed to run it in a heavily condensed form. The Fortnightly serialized it between August 1874 and December 1875. Chapman & Hall published Beauchamp's Career in 3 volumes at the end of 1875, though on the imprint the date was given as 1876.Oxford University Press published it in their World's Classics series in 1950 with an introduction by G. M. Young, and again in 1988 edited by Margaret Harris.
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