Love, Passion and Cruelty in Van Diemen's Land: George Meredith's Love Letters to His Wife 1823-1836

"George Meredith was a pioneer, a former Royal Marine officer and was unafraid to take on powerful interests in his new home. Van Dieman's Land. He was also a bully and mostly acted in his own interests in colonial affairs. Within the privacy of his estate, he carried on a torrid relationship with his young wife, Mary, which he described and amplified in a series of sometimes graphic letters to her during his frequent absences from his farm. He mixed his passionate prose with cruel criticism of her for her failure to write back to him to his satisfaction. Love, Passion and Cruelty in Van Dieman's Land is an edited collection of George Meredith's love letters to his wife, spanning over a decade of the early 1800s and includes some introductory chapters on Meredith and his contemporaries, and explains the metaphor Meredith used in his writing, which used the garden as a theme."