An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit is the most extensive work on the nineteenth century comic genre. It was initially presented as Meredith's first and only public lecture in London in 1877, and published separately as a book in 1897. In it, Meredith defines comedy as a "humour of the mind," not prevalent in the British society of his day, which he saw as fraught with "Unreason and Sentimentalism." The work had a strong influence on writers such as Oscar Wilde and Virginia Woolf, and is remarkable for discussing comedy within the context of the status of women and as a means for their advancement.