Self-absorbed Sir Willoughby Patterne seeks a bride. After being jilted by his first fiancée he settles on the spirited Clara Middleton; but she starts to realise that he only wants a mirror for himself and his opinions. As she becomes desperate to disengage, and he becomes desperate to hold on to her, so a series of farcical, labyrinthine misunderstandings ensues. Meredith’s brand of satirical firepower won him the admiration of Robert Louis Stevenson, who read The Egoist (1879) multiple times, and Oscar Wilde, who wrote: ‘Ah, Meredith! Who can define him? His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning’.