That’s her on the cover, lower left hand corner. The first Mrs. George Meredith, nee Mary Ellen Peacock. This biography, written in 1972 by early feminist Diane Johnson, is wonderfully quirky and fascinating. Mary Ellen, to give her the only name that was truly hers, was not famous in her own right, but was what I’d call famous-adjacent. Her father was the Romantic poet Thomas Love Peacock, who, whilst rambling about Wales in search of dramatic scenery, met Jane Gryffydh, daughter of a vicar of […]