The Egoist is a tragicomical novel by George Meredith published in 1879. The novel recounts the story of self-absorbed Sir Willoughby Patterne and his attempts at marriage; jilted by his first bride-to-be, he vacillates between the sentimental Laetitia Dale and the strong-willed Clara Middleton. More importantly, the novel follows Clara’s attempts to escape from her engagement to Sir Willoughby, who desires women to serve as a mirror for him and consequently cannot understand why she would not want to marry him...

The novel is a humorous oriental romance and allegory written in the style of the Arabian Nights. Like its model, it includes a number of stories within the story, along with poetic asides.“The variety of scenes and images, the untiring evolution of plot, the kaleidoscopic shifting of harmonious colours, all these seem of the very essence of Arabia, and to coil directly from some bottle of a genie. Ah! what a bottle!” -Edmund Gosse in Gossip in a Library

After his wife's desertion, Sir Austin wants to bring up his son according to a strict educational system governing every aspect of his life. However Richard has to make his own mistakes, fall in love, and generally live his own life. This book tells about the clashes between Richard's wish to govern his own life to his father's constant interference. This book was very influential. The leading libraries of the day considered it too frank and sexually explicit and refused to buy it. Later authors including E. M. Forster, Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf admired and respected it. - Summary by Stav Nisser and Wikipedia

This is a 50-poem sequence of 16-line sonnets, divided into 10 sections. It has been called "a novelette in sonnet form". The author, George Meredith, pours his heart out in raw anguish, pain, and heartbreak, as he recalls the moments, and sometimes intimate memories of his wife who deserted him for another lover.