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Meredith based the titular character of Diana on socialite, poet and novelist Caroline Norton, with whom he was acquainted, and the politics of the story on the troubled history of [[Robert Peel]]'s administration and the 1845 [[Corn Laws]]. Norton had been accused of selling to ''[[The Times]]'' the news, allegedly told to her by admirer [[Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea|Sidney Herbert]], of Peel's intent to repeal the laws. The story was later proven false, but its prominence in Meredith's fictionalized story drew significant credence to the claim.<ref name="collie">{{cite book |last1=Collie |first1=Michael |title=George Meredith |publisher=University of Toronto Press |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/George_Meredith/-Jc6pCYgxcUC |access-date=23 September 2022}}</ref> Beginning with the 1890 edition, Meredith added a disclaimer to the preface of the book that "the story of ''Diana of the Crossways'' is to be read as fiction."<ref name="gretton" />
''Diana of the Crossways'' has been described as a [[feminist literature|feminist novel]], and contemporary writers have drawn additional parallels between Diana's marriage and Meredith's similarly troubled marriage to his first wife Mary Ellen, the dissolution of which had deeply troubled him for several decades.<ref name="gornick">{{cite web |last1=Gornick |first1=Vivian |title=Vivian Gornick on the "Forgotten" Wife of Victorian Novelist, George Meredith |url=https://lithub.com/vivian-gornick-on-the-forgotten-wife-of-victorian-novelist-george-meredith/ |website=Lithub |date=24 June 2020 |access-date=23 September 2022}}</ref> Richard Cronin of the [[University of Glasgow]] argues that Meredith's choice to make Diana childless -- unlike Norton, whose political activism over losing custody of her sons famously led [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament]] to pass several reforms concerning married women's rights -- stemmed from a desire to "avoid reflecting on the similarities between [George Norton's behavior] and his own behavior toward Mary Ellen."<ref name="cronin" />
==Plot==
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