Mary Anne Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the
Victorian eraThe Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
. She is the author of seven novels, including
Adam BedeAdam Bede, the first novel written by George Eliot , was published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time...
(1859),
The Mill on the FlossThe Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot , first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The first American edition was by Thomas Y...
(1860),
Silas MarnerSilas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe is a dramatic novel by George Eliot. Her third novel, it was first published in 1861. An outwardly simple tale of a reclusive weaver, in its strong realism it represents one of Eliot's most sophisticated treatments of her attitude to religion.-Plot summary:The...
(1861),
MiddlemarchMiddlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and then put aside during the final illness of Thornton Lewes, the son of her companion George Henry Lewes...
(1871–72), and
Daniel DerondaDaniel Deronda is a novel by George Eliot, first published in 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day...
(1876), most of them set in provincial England and well known for their
realismRealism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
and psychological insight.
She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works be taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot's life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances. An additional factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married
George Henry LewesGeorge Henry Lewes was an English philosopher and critic of literature and theatre. He became part of the mid-Victorian ferment of ideas which encouraged discussion of Darwinism, positivism, and religious scepticism...
, with whom she lived for over 20 years.
Early life and education
Mary Anne Evans was the third child of Robert Evans (1773–1849) and Christiana Evans née Pearson (1788–1836), the daughter of a local farmer. Mary Anne's name was sometimes shortened to Marian. Her full siblings were Christiana, known as Chrissey (1814–59), Isaac (1816–1890), and twin brothers who survived a few days in March 1821. She also had a half-brother, Robert (1802–64), and half-sister, Fanny (1805–82), from her father's previous marriage to Harriet Poynton (?1780–1809). Robert Evans, of Welsh ancestry, was the manager of the
Arbury HallArbury Hall is a Grade I listed country house in Nuneaton in Warwickshire, England, and is the ancestral home of the Newdigate family, later the Newdigate-Newdegate and Fitzroy-Newdegate families....
Estate for the Newdigate family in Warwickshire, and Mary Anne was born on the estate at South Farm. In early 1820 the family moved to a house named Griff, between
NuneatonNuneaton is the largest town in the Borough of Nuneaton and Bedworth and in the English county of Warwickshire.Nuneaton is most famous for its associations with the 19th century author George Eliot, who was born on a farm on the Arbury Estate just outside Nuneaton in 1819 and lived in the town for...
and
BedworthBedworth is a market town in the Nuneaton and Bedworth district of Warwickshire, England. It lies northwest of London, east of Birmingham, and north northeast of the county town of Warwick. It is situated between Coventry, to the south, and Nuneaton, to the north.In the 2001 census the town...
.
The young Evans was obviously intelligent and a voracious reader. Because she was not considered physically beautiful, and thus not thought to have much chance of marriage, and because of her intelligence, her father invested in an education not often afforded women. From ages five to nine, she boarded with her sister Chrissey at Miss Latham's school in
AttleboroughAttleborough is an area of Nuneaton in Warwickshire in central England. It is about a mile south-east of the town centre. The centre of Attleborough has a village feel to it and contains a number of shops, restaurants, takeaways and pubs...
, from ages nine to thirteen at Mrs. Wallington's school in Nuneaton, and from ages thirteen to sixteen at Miss Franklin's school in Coventry. At Mrs. Wallington's school, she was taught by the
evangelicalEvangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
Maria Lewis—to whom her earliest surviving letters are addressed. In the religious atmosphere of the Miss Franklin's school, Evans was exposed to a quiet, disciplined belief opposed to evangelicalism.
After age sixteen, Eliot had little formal education. Thanks to her father's important role on the estate, she was allowed access to the library of Arbury Hall, which greatly aided her self-education and breadth of learning. Her classical education left its mark; Christopher Stray has observed that "George Eliot's novels draw heavily on Greek literature (only one of her books can be printed correctly without the use of a Greek typeface), and her themes are often influenced by Greek tragedy". Her frequent visits to the estate also allowed her to contrast the wealth in which the local landowner lived with the lives of the often much poorer people on the estate, and different lives lived in parallel would reappear in many of her works. The other important early influence in her life was religion. She was brought up within a narrow
low churchLow church is a term of distinction in the Church of England or other Anglican churches initially designed to be pejorative. During the series of doctrinal and ecclesiastic challenges to the established church in the 16th and 17th centuries, commentators and others began to refer to those groups...
Anglican family, but at that time the
MidlandsThe Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
was an area with a growing number of
religious dissentersEnglish Dissenters were Christians who separated from the Church of England in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.They originally agitated for a wide reaching Protestant Reformation of the Established Church, and triumphed briefly under Oliver Cromwell....
.
Move to Coventry
In 1836 her mother died and Evans (then 16) returned home to act as housekeeper, but she continued correspondence with her tutor Maria Lewis. When she was 21, her brother Isaac married and took over the family home, so Evans and her father moved to
FoleshillFoleshill is a suburb in the north of Coventry in the West Midlands of England.Longford. Courthouse Green and Rowley Green are to its north and Keresley is to its west.- History :...
near
CoventryCoventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
. The closeness to Coventry society brought new influences, most notably those of Charles and Cara Bray.
Charles BrayCharles Bray was a prosperous British ribbon manufacturer, social reformer, philanthropist, philosopher, and phrenologist.-Life:...
had become rich as a ribbon manufacturer and had used his wealth in building schools and other philanthropic causes. Evans, who had been struggling with religious doubts for some time, became intimate friends with the progressive, free-thinking Brays, whose home was a haven for people who held and debated radical views. The people whom the young woman met at the Brays' house included
Robert OwenRobert Owen was a Welsh social reformer and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement.Owen's philosophy was based on three intellectual pillars:...
,
Herbert SpencerHerbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
,
Harriet MartineauHarriet Martineau was an English social theorist and Whig writer, often cited as the first female sociologist....
and
Ralph Waldo EmersonRalph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century...
. Through this society, Evans was introduced to more liberal theologies, and writers such as
David StraussDavid Friedrich Strauss was a German theologian and writer. He scandalized Christian Europe with his portrayal of the "historical Jesus," whose divine nature he denied...
and Ludwig Feuerbach, who cast doubt on the literal veracity of Biblical stories. In fact, her first major literary work was translating into English Strauss' Life of Jesus (1846), which she completed after it had been begun by another member of the Rosehill circle.
When Evans began to question her religious faith, her father threatened to throw her out, although that did not happen. Instead, she respectably attended church for years and continued to keep house for him until his death in 1849, when she was 30. Five days after her father's funeral, she travelled to
SwitzerlandSwitzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
with the Brays. She decided to stay in
GenevaGeneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
alone, living first on the lake at Plongeon (near the present United Nations buildings) and then at the Rue de Chanoines (now the Rue de la Pelisserie) with François and Juliet d’Albert Durade on the second floor ("one feels in a downy nest high up in a good old tree"). Her stay is recorded by a plaque on the building. She read avidly and took long walks amongst a natural environment that inspired her greatly. François painted a portrait of her.
Move to London and editorship of the Westminster Review
On her return to England the following year (1850), she moved to London with the intent of becoming a writer and calling herself Marian Evans. She stayed at the house of
John ChapmanJohn Chapman was a publisher who had medical training and was based at 142 Strand, London.His entry in the Concise Dictionary of National Biography, reads: "Chapman, John physician, author, publisher; apprencticed at Worksop and was in business in Adelaide; studied medicine in Paris and at St...
, the radical publisher whom she had met at Rosehill and who had printed her translation. Chapman had recently bought the campaigning, left-wing journal The Westminster Review, and Evans became its assistant editor in 1851. Although Chapman was the named editor, it was Evans who did much of the work in running the journal, contributing many essays and reviews, from the January, 1852 number until the dissolution of her arrangement with Chapman in the first half of 1854.
Women writers were not uncommon at the time, but Evans's role at the head of a literary enterprise was. The mere sight of an unmarried young woman mixing with the predominantly male society of London at that time was unusual, even scandalous to some. Although clearly strong-minded, she was frequently sensitive, depressed, and crippled by self-doubt. She was considered to have an ill-favoured appearance, and she formed a number of embarrassing, unreciprocated emotional attachments, including that to her employer, the married Chapman, and
Herbert SpencerHerbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
.
Relationship with George Lewes
The philosopher and critic
George Henry LewesGeorge Henry Lewes was an English philosopher and critic of literature and theatre. He became part of the mid-Victorian ferment of ideas which encouraged discussion of Darwinism, positivism, and religious scepticism...
met Evans in 1851, and by 1854 they had decided to live together. Lewes was married to Agnes Jervis, but they had agreed to have an
open marriageOpen marriage typically refers to a marriage in which the partners agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without this being regarded as infidelity. There are many different styles of open marriage, with the partners having varying levels of input on their spouse's...
, and in addition to the 3 children they had together, Agnes had also had 4 children by Thornton Leigh Hunt. Since Lewes was named on the birth certificates as the father of these children despite knowing this to be false, and was therefore considered complicit in adultery, he was not able to divorce Agnes. In July 1854, Lewes and Evans travelled to
WeimarWeimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...
and Berlin together for the purpose of research. Before going to Germany, Evans continued her interest in theological work with a translation of Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, and while abroad she wrote essays and worked on her translation of
Baruch SpinozaBaruch de Spinoza and later Benedict de Spinoza was a Dutch Jewish philosopher. Revealing considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work was not fully realized until years after his death...
's
EthicsEthics is a philosophical book written by Benedict de Spinoza. It was written in Latin. Although it was published posthumously in 1677, it is his most famous work, and is considered his magnum opus....
, which she completed in 1856, but which was not published in her life-time.
The trip to Germany also served as a honeymoon as Evans and Lewes now considered themselves married, with Evans calling herself Marian Evans Lewes, and referring to Lewes as her husband. It was not unusual for men and women in Victorian society to have affairs; Charles Bray, John Chapman,
Friedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...
, and
Wilkie CollinsWilliam Wilkie Collins was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. He was very popular during the Victorian era and wrote 30 novels, more than 60 short stories, 14 plays, and over 100 non-fiction pieces...
all had affairs, though more discreetly than Lewes and Evans. What was scandalous was their open admission of the relationship.
First publication
While continuing to contribute pieces to the Westminster Review, Evans had resolved to become a novelist, and she set out a manifesto for herself in one of her last essays for the Review, "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" (1856). The essay criticised the trivial and ridiculous plots of contemporary fiction by women. In other essays she praised the
realismRealism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
of novels written in Europe at the time, and an emphasis placed on realistic storytelling would become clear throughout her subsequent fiction. She also adopted a new nom-de-plume, the one for which she would become best known: George Eliot. This masculine name was chosen partly in order to distance herself from the lady writers of silly novels, but it also quietly hid the tricky subject of her marital status.
In 1858 (when she was 39) Amos Barton, the first of the
Scenes of Clerical LifeScenes of Clerical Life is the title under which George Eliot's first published fictional work, a collection of three short stories, was released in book form, and the first of her works to be released under her famous pseudonym...
, was published in
Blackwood's MagazineBlackwood's Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The first number appeared in April 1817 under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn...
and, along with the other Scenes, was well received. Her first complete novel, published in 1859, was
Adam BedeAdam Bede, the first novel written by George Eliot , was published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time...
and was an instant success, but it prompted an intense interest in who this new author might be. Scenes of Clerical Life was widely believed to have been written by a country
parsonIn the pre-Reformation church, a parson was the priest of an independent parish church, that is, a parish church not under the control of a larger ecclesiastical or monastic organization...
or perhaps the wife of a parson. With the release of the incredibly popular Adam Bede, speculation increased markedly, and there was even a pretender to the authorship, one Joseph Liggins. In the end, the real George Eliot stepped forward: Marian Evans Lewes admitted she was the author. The revelations about Eliot's private life surprised and shocked many of her admiring readers, but this apparently did not affect her popularity as a novelist. Eliot's relationship with Lewes afforded her the encouragement and stability she so badly needed to write fiction, and to ease her self-doubt, but it would be some time before they were accepted into polite society. Acceptance was finally confirmed in 1877, when they were introduced to
Princess LouiseThe Princess Louise was a member of the British Royal Family, the sixth child and fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and her husband, Albert, Prince Consort.Louise's early life was spent moving between the various royal residences in the...
, the daughter of Queen Victoria, who was an avid reader of George Eliot's novels.
After the popularity of Adam Bede, she continued to write popular novels for the next fifteen years. Within a year of completing Adam Bede, she finished
The Mill on the FlossThe Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot , first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The first American edition was by Thomas Y...
, inscribing the manuscript: "To my beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give this MS. of my third book, written in the sixth year of our life together, at Holly Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21 March 1860."
Her last novel was
Daniel DerondaDaniel Deronda is a novel by George Eliot, first published in 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day...
, published in 1876, whereafter she and Lewes moved to
WitleyWitley, in Surrey, England is a village south west of Godalming. The village lies just east of the A3 that runs from Guildford to Petersfield. Witley together with the neighbouring area of Hambledon have a population of about 4,000. Neighbouring villages include Milford, Chiddingfold and...
, Surrey; but by this time Lewes's health was failing and he died two years later on 30 November 1878. Eliot spent the next two years editing Lewes's final work Life and Mind for publication, and she found solace with John Walter Cross, a Scottish commission agent whose mother had recently died.
Marriage to John Cross and death
On 16 May 1880 Eliot courted controversy once more by marrying a man twenty years younger than herself, and again changing her name, this time to Mary Anne Cross. The legal marriage at least pleased her brother Isaac, who had broken off relations with his sister when she had begun to live with Lewes, but now sent congratulations. John Cross was a rather unstable character, and apparently jumped or fell from their hotel balcony into the Grand Canal in
VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
during their honeymoon. Cross survived and they returned to England. The couple moved to a new house in Chelsea but Eliot fell ill with a throat infection. This, coupled with the kidney disease she had been afflicted with for the previous few years, led to her death on 22 December 1880 at the age of 61.
Eliot was not buried in
Westminster AbbeyThe Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
because of her denial of the Christian faith and her "irregular" though monogamous life with Lewes. She was interred in
Highgate CemeteryHighgate Cemetery is a cemetery located in north London, England. It is designated Grade I on the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England. It is divided into two parts, named the East and West cemetery....
(East), Highgate, London in the area reserved for religious dissenters or agnostics, next to
George Henry LewesGeorge Henry Lewes was an English philosopher and critic of literature and theatre. He became part of the mid-Victorian ferment of ideas which encouraged discussion of Darwinism, positivism, and religious scepticism...
; Karl Marx's memorial is nearby. In 1980, on the centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the Poets’ Corner.
Several key buildings in her birthplace of Nuneaton are named after her or titles of her novels. For example The George Eliot School (Previously George Eliot Community School) and Middlemarch Junior School. In 1948, Nuneaton Emergency Hospital was named George Eliot Hospital in Eliot's honour. George Eliot Road, in
FoleshillFoleshill is a suburb in the north of Coventry in the West Midlands of England.Longford. Courthouse Green and Rowley Green are to its north and Keresley is to its west.- History :...
, Coventry was named in her honour.
Literary assessment
Throughout her career, Eliot wrote with a politically astute pen. From
Adam BedeAdam Bede, the first novel written by George Eliot , was published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time...
to
The Mill on the FlossThe Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot , first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The first American edition was by Thomas Y...
and
Silas MarnerSilas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe is a dramatic novel by George Eliot. Her third novel, it was first published in 1861. An outwardly simple tale of a reclusive weaver, in its strong realism it represents one of Eliot's most sophisticated treatments of her attitude to religion.-Plot summary:The...
, Eliot presented the cases of social outsiders and small-town persecution.
Felix Holt, the RadicalFelix Holt, the Radical is a social novel written by George Eliot about political disputes in a small English town at the time of the First Reform Act of 1832.In January 1868, Eliot penned an article entitled "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt"...
and The Legend of Jubal were overtly political, and political crisis is at the heart of
MiddlemarchMiddlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and then put aside during the final illness of Thornton Lewes, the son of her companion George Henry Lewes...
, in which she presents the stories of a number of denizens of a small English town on the eve of the
Reform BillThe Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of England and Wales...
of 1832; the novel is notable for its deep psychological insight and sophisticated character portraits, the roots of this realist philosophy in her review of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in Westminster Review in 1856.
Readers in the Victorian era particularly praised her books for their depictions of rural society, for which she drew on her own early experiences, and she shared with
WordsworthWilliam Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....
the belief that there was much interest and importance in the mundane details of ordinary country lives. Eliot did not, however, confine herself to her bucolic roots.
RomolaRomola is a historical novel by George Eliot set in the fifteenth century, and is "a deep study of life in the city of Florence from an intellectual, artistic, religious, and social point of view". It first appeared in fourteen parts published in Cornhill Magazine from July 1862 to August 1863...
, an historical novel set in late 15th century
FlorenceFlorence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
and touching on the lives of several real persons such as the priest
Girolamo SavonarolaGirolamo Savonarola was an Italian Dominican friar, Scholastic, and an influential contributor to the politics of Florence from 1494 until his execution in 1498. He was known for his book burning, destruction of what he considered immoral art, and what he thought the Renaissance—which began in his...
, displays her wider reading and interests. In The Spanish Gypsy , Eliot made a foray into verse, creating a work whose initial popularity has not endured.
The religious elements in her fiction also owe much to her upbringing, with the experiences of Maggie Tulliver from The Mill on the Floss sharing many similarities with the young Mary Anne Evans's own development. When Silas Marner is persuaded that his alienation from the church means also his alienation from society, the author's life is again mirrored with her refusal to attend church. She was at her most autobiographical in Looking Backwards, part of her final printed work
Impressions of Theophrastus SuchImpressions of Theophrastus Such is a work of fiction by George Eliot, first published in 1879. It was Eliot's last published writing and her most experimental, taking the form of a series of literary essays by an imaginary minor scholar whose eccentric character is revealed through his...
. By the time of
Daniel DerondaDaniel Deronda is a novel by George Eliot, first published in 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day...
, Eliot's sales were falling off, and she faded from public view to some degree. This was not helped by the biography written by her husband after her death, which portrayed a wonderful, almost saintly, woman totally at odds with the scandalous life people knew she had led. In the 20th century she was championed by a new breed of critics, most notably by
Virginia WoolfAdeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, who called Middlemarch "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people". The various film and television adaptations of Eliot's books have re-introduced her to the wider-reading public.
Novels
- Adam Bede
Adam Bede, the first novel written by George Eliot , was published in 1859. It was published pseudonymously, even though Evans was a well-published and highly respected scholar of her time...
, 1859
- The Mill on the Floss
The Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot , first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The first American edition was by Thomas Y...
, 1860
- Silas Marner
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe is a dramatic novel by George Eliot. Her third novel, it was first published in 1861. An outwardly simple tale of a reclusive weaver, in its strong realism it represents one of Eliot's most sophisticated treatments of her attitude to religion.-Plot summary:The...
, 1861
- Romola
Romola is a historical novel by George Eliot set in the fifteenth century, and is "a deep study of life in the city of Florence from an intellectual, artistic, religious, and social point of view". It first appeared in fourteen parts published in Cornhill Magazine from July 1862 to August 1863...
, 1863
- Felix Holt, the Radical
Felix Holt, the Radical is a social novel written by George Eliot about political disputes in a small English town at the time of the First Reform Act of 1832.In January 1868, Eliot penned an article entitled "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt"...
, 1866
- Middlemarch
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and then put aside during the final illness of Thornton Lewes, the son of her companion George Henry Lewes...
, 1871–72
- Daniel Deronda
Daniel Deronda is a novel by George Eliot, first published in 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day...
, 1876
Poetry
- The Spanish Gypsy (a dramatic poem), 1868
- Agatha, 1869
- Armgart, 1871
- Stradivarius, 1873
- The Legend of Jubal, 1874
- Arion, 1874
- A Minor Prophet, 1874
- A College Breakfast Party, 1879
- The Death of Moses, 1879
- From a London Drawing Room
- Count That Day Lost
- I Grant You Ample Leave
Other
- Digital facsimile of manuscript "Quarry for Middlemarch", MS Lowell 13, Houghton Library, Harvard University
- Translation of "The Life of Jesus Critically Examined" Volume 2 by David Strauss
David Friedrich Strauss was a German theologian and writer. He scandalized Christian Europe with his portrayal of the "historical Jesus," whose divine nature he denied...
, 1846
- Translation of "The Essence of Christianity" by Ludwig Feuerbach, 1854
- "Three Months in Weimar", 1855
- "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists", 1856
- "The Natural History of German Life", 1856
- Scenes of Clerical Life
Scenes of Clerical Life is the title under which George Eliot's first published fictional work, a collection of three short stories, was released in book form, and the first of her works to be released under her famous pseudonym...
, 1857
- The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton
- Mr Gilfil's Love Story
- Janet's Repentance
- The Lifted Veil
The Lifted Veil is a novella by George Eliot, first published in 1859. Quite unlike the realistic fiction for which Eliot is best known, The Lifted Veil explores themes of extrasensory perception, the essence of physical life, possible life after death, and the power of fate...
, 1859
- Brother Jacob, 1864
- "The Influence of Rationalism", 1865
- Impressions of Theophrastus Such
Impressions of Theophrastus Such is a work of fiction by George Eliot, first published in 1879. It was Eliot's last published writing and her most experimental, taking the form of a series of literary essays by an imaginary minor scholar whose eccentric character is revealed through his...
, 1879
- Review of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in Westminster Review April 1856.
Further reading
- Haight, Gordon S.
Gordon Sherman Haight was an American professor of English at Yale University from 1950 to 1968...
, George Eliot: A Biography, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1968, ISBN 0-19-811666-7.
- Haight, Gordon S., ed., George Eliot: Letters, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1954, ISBN 0-300-01088-5.
- Uglow, Jennifer, George Eliot, London, Virago, 1987, ISBN 0-394-75359-3.
- Jenkins, Lucien, Collected Poems of George Eliot, London, Skoob Books Publishing, 1989, ISBN 1-871438-35-7.
Context and background
- Beer, Gillian, Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983, ISBN 0-521-78392-5.
- Beer, Gillian, George Eliot, Prentice Hall / Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1986, ISBN 0-7108-0511-X.
- Chapman, Raymond, The Sense of the Past in Victorian Literature, London, CroomHelm, 1986, ISBN 0-7099-3441-6.
- Cosslett, Tess, The 'Scientific Movement' and Victorian Literature, Brighton, Harvester, 1982, ISBN 0-312-70298-1.
- Gilbert, Sandra M., and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1979, ISBN 0-300-08458-7.
- Hughes, Kathryn, George Eliot: The Last Victorian, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998, ISBN 0-374-16138-0.
- Edel, Leon (ed.) Henry James: Selected Letters, Belknap Press (1990) ISBN 0674387945
- Pinney, Thomas, ed., Essays of George Eliot, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963, ISBN 0-231-02619-6.
- Rignall, John, ed., 'Oxford Reader's Companion to George Eliot', Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-860099-2
- Rignall, John, ed., 'George Eliot and Europe', Scolar Press, 1997, ISBN 1-85928-334-9
- Shuttleworth, Sally, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-25786-7.
- Thompson, Andrew, 1998, 'George Eliot and Italy: Literary, Cultural and Political Influences from Dante to the Risorgimento, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1998, ISBN 0-312-17651-1.
- Uglow, Jenny, George Eliot, London, Virago Press, 1988, ISBN 0 86068 400 8.
- Willey, Basil, Nineteenth-Century Studies: Coleridge to Matthew Arnold, London, Chatto & Windus, 1964, ISBN 0-14-021709-6.
- Williams, Raymond, The Country and the City, London, Chatto & Windus, 1973, ISBN 0-19-519810-7.
Critical studies
- Alley, Henry
Henry Alley is an American author and educator known for gay themes in his work.- Life and career :Henry Alley grew up in Seattle, Washington, and studied at Stanford University from 1963 to 1967, with a major in English literature and a minor in classics. He wrote his honors thesis on...
, "The Quest for Anonymity: The Novels of George Eliot", University of Delaware Press, 1997.
- Ashton, Rosemary, George Eliot, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1983.
- Beaty, Jerome, Middlemarch from Notebook to Novel: A Study of George Eliot's Creative Method, Champaign, Illinois, University of Illinois, 1960.
- Carroll, Alicia, Dark Smiles: Race and Desire in George Eliot, Ohio University Press, 2003.
- Carroll, David, ed., George Eliot: The Critical Heritage, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971.
- Daiches, David
David Daiches was a Scottish literary historian and literary critic, scholar and writer. He wrote extensively on English literature, Scottish literature and Scottish culture.-Early life:...
, George Eliot: Middlemarch, London, Edward Arnold, 1963.
- Dentith, Simon, George Eliot, Brighton, Harvester, 1986.
- Garrett, Peter K., The Victorian Multiplot Novel: Studies in Dialogical Form, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, 1980.
- Graver, Suzanne, George Eliot and Community: A Study in Social Theory and Fictional Form, Berkeley, California, University of California Press, 1984.
- Harvey, W. J, The Art of George Eliot, London, Chatto & Windus, 1961.
- Kettle, Arnold. An Introduction to the English Novel, vol. I, London, Hutchinson, 1951.
- Leavis, F R The Great Tradition, London, Chatto & Windus, 1948.
- Neale, Catherine, Middlemarch: Penguin Critical Studies,London, Penguin, 1989
- Swinden, Patrick, eel., George Eliot: Middlemarch, London, Macmillan, 1972.
External links
- George Eliot's Literary Works
- Poetry Foundation profile and poems
- George Eliot at The Victorian Web
- Literary Encyclopedia biography
- Biography
- Athenaeum review of The Mill on the Floss
The Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot , first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The first American edition was by Thomas Y...
by Geraldine JewsburyGeraldine Endsor Jewsbury was an English novelist and woman of letters.-Life and family:Jewsbury was born in Measham, then in Derbyshire, now in Leicestershire. She was the daughter of Thomas Jewsbury , a cotton manufacturer and merchant, and his wife Maria, née Smith,...
, (7 April 1860)
- George Eliot Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...