Celt and Saxon: ans other short works

By George Meredith. Designed and Edited with an Introduction by Colin Heston.

Published posthumously in 1910, Celt and Saxon represents George Meredith’s final, unfinished foray into the social and psychological intricacies that occupied his life’s work. Though left incomplete at the time of his death, the novel encapsulates many of Meredith’s enduring concerns: the collision of cultures, the tensions of national identity, the role of women in modern society, and the inescapable dance between personal desire and social obligation. It stands as both a summation of Meredith’s intellectual preoccupations and a poignant farewell from one of Victorian England’s most challenging and original literary minds.
The title, Celt and Saxon, announces immediately that the novel grapples with one of the central ethnic and political fault lines of the British Isles: the relationship between the English (Saxon) and the Irish (Celt). By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the so-called “Irish Question” loomed large over British politics. The long history of Anglo-Irish conflict—marked by conquest, colonization, famine, and rebellion—had crystallized into fierce debates about Home Rule, national identity, and the future of the United Kingdom.
Celt and Saxon stands as a fitting culmination of George Meredith’s literary journey. It is at once a love story, a family drama, and a political allegory—a work that captures the intricate dance between passion and principle, between history and the individual.
Though unfinished, it offers one of the most sophisticated literary treatments of Anglo-Irish relations in the Victorian canon, rendered with Meredith’s signature blend of intellectual rigor, emotional depth, and merciless yet compassionate irony. It leaves readers not with easy answers but with an enduring question: how do we live honestly within the web of history, identity, and the aching desire to be both free and connected?
Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. 265 p.