Definition of "materialist"

Ironically, today's generation has become the little materialists and "fame whores" (New York Magazines term) their boomer parents so reviled.

'2007 March 2, Christopher Orlet, “The Look-at-Me Generation”, in The American Spectator‎

It is weary work enough to argue with an ordinary materialist, who hurls statistics and whole strata of geological facts at your head, whilst you can only buffet him with deductions and instincts and the snowflakes of faith, that are, alas! so apt to melt in the hot embers of our troubles.

1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887