George Eliot

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Standard Name: Eliot, George
Birth Name: Mary Anne Evans
Nickname: Polly
Nickname: Pollian
Self-constructed Name: Mary Ann Evans
Self-constructed Name: Marian Evans
Self-constructed Name: Marian Evans Lewes
Pseudonym: George Eliot
Pseudonym: Felix Holt
Married Name: Mary Anne Cross
GE , one of the major novelists of the nineteenth century and a leading practitioner of fictional realism, was a professional woman of letters who also worked as an editor and journalist, and left a substantial body of essays, reviews, translations on controversial topics, and poetry.
Portrait of George Eliot, seated, after the 1881 painting of Francois Albert Durade.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
By December 1860 BLSB was sufficiently interested in Roman Catholicism (to which Bessie Rayner Parkes later converted) to write about her interest to George Eliot , who responded with sympathy but a clear statement of...
Cultural formation Rose Macaulay
Over the course of her life, RM 's religious practices ranged between Anglican and Anglo-agnostic. She was initially given instruction in the Anglican faith by her mother. As an early adolescent (like George Eliot 's...
death Augusta Webster
Theodore Watts-Dunton 's tribute in the Athenæum recalled a noble band of women represented by George Eliot , Mrs. Webster, and Miss Cobbe , who, in virtue of lofty purpose, purity of soul, and deep...
death Edith J. Simcox
Her ashes were buried with her mother at Aspley Guise, nine miles south of Bedford. The remains of her friend Elma Stuart lie beside those of George Eliot , an honour which she...
death George Henry Lewes
GHL , writer and partner of George Eliot , died at The Priory, near Regent's Park.
Ashton, Rosemary. G. H. Lewes: A Life. Clarendon Press, 1991.
277
Dedications Jane Hume Clapperton
She dedicated the book to the memory of my early teachers, George Eliot and James Cranbrook , as well as her friend the author George Arthur Gaskell .
Clapperton, Jane Hume. Scientific Meliorism and the Evolution of Happiness. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. , 1885.
v
Education Louisa Baldwin
Following her marriage, she studied German, French, and Italian, as well as the works of Shakespeare and the novels of George Eliot .
Taylor, Ina. Victorian Sisters. Adler and Adler, 1987.
114-15, 127
Education Charlotte Mew
CM later attended lectures at University College, London , and read widely in English and French. She particularly admired George Eliot .
Mew, Charlotte. “Introduction”. Collected Poems and Prose, edited by Val Warner, Carcanet and Virago, 1981, p. ix - xxii.
ix
Education Susan Tweedsmuir
She was, however, always reading as a child: she and her sister had few books, but knew by heart whole chapters of the ones they did have. As a child Susan hated Mrs Mortimer 's...
Education Mary Gawthorpe
Like all her siblings but one, MG had been taught to read before she went to the local Church of England infants' school, St Michael's, at the age of five.
Gawthorpe, Mary. Up Hill to Holloway. Traversity Press, 1962.
19
The whole family had...
Education Alice Meynell
In the summer of 1852 Elizabeth and Alice Thompson (later AM ) began their education under their father's instruction. Recording her daughters' lessons, Christiana Thompson writes, Dear little angels do their writing . ....
Education Jessie Fothergill
She acquired much knowledge through her voracious consumption of books: I loved books, and read all that I could get hold of, and have had many a rebuke for poring over those books instead of...
Education Alison Uttley
Alice Jane Taylor (later AU ) was a strong-willed child who set her own agenda. She later remembered a trial of wills, at the age of two, with her godmother, which ended not in her...
Education Viola Meynell
After leaving school at sixteen, VM read widely on her own, especially English authors: George Eliot , Dickens , George Meredith , Arnold Bennett , John Galsworthy , and Thomas Hardy .
MacKenzie, Raymond N. A Critical Biography of English Novelist Viola Meynell, 1885-1956. Edwin Mellen, 2002.
61, 65
Education Toru Dutt
TD and Aru were briefly enrolled at a boarding school in Nice where they studied French.
Rao, Raja, and Toru Dutt. “Aru and Toru”. Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, Writers Workshop, 1972.
After moving to England they continued their studies and attended the Higher Lectures for Women series begun by Henry Sidgwick

Timeline

About 1349-1351
Giovanni Boccaccio worked at his cycle of tales entitled (from the fact that the stories are told over the course of ten days) the Decameron. It was first translated into English in 1620.
1495
In a bonfire of the vanities in Florence, Italy, Girolamo Savonarola destroyed texts by Ovid , Dante , Boccaccio and others.
1677
Baruch or Benedictus de Spinoza 's Ethics, probably his most important text, was published shortly after his death at the age of forty-four.
January 1802
The Christian Observer was launched, as a journalConducted by members of the established church with the aim of combating Methodism and other Dissenting sects as well as radicalism and scepticism.
April 1817
The first issue of Blackwood's EdinburghMagazine appeared; founder William Blackwood intended to offer Tory competition to the liberal Edinburgh Review.
1826
The English Gypsy, or Roma, population was grouped by authorities with all nomadic or vagrant peoples, who were estimated by William Cobbett to number around 30,000.
1828
The first issue of the successful annual gift bookThe Keepsake appeared; lavish production and distinguished contributors raised the price of this and other such publications to a guinea.
22 March 1832
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at Weimar in Germany in his early eighties.
Chisholm, Hugh, editor. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Cambridge University Press, 1911.
20 March 1839
The Anti-Corn Law League was founded.
1841
Ludwig Feuerbach published Das Wesen des Christentums, an influential philosophical work demythologising Christianity.
1843
Charles Edward Mudie opened his first circulating library .
March 1848
Chartist uprisings took place in London, Glasgow, and Manchester.
1851
French medical researcher Charles-Edouard Brown-Séquard experimented with the effects of blood transfusion on the responsiveness of nerves in human corpses.
January 1852
Publisher John Chapman purchased the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly and began issuing it as the Westminster Review (which, twenty-eight years and several mergers back, had been its original name).
July 1855
Alfred Tennyson published Maud and Other Poems.

Texts

Eliot, George. Adam Bede. W. Blackwood, 1859.
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. W. Blackwood, 1876.
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. Editor Cave, Terence, Penguin, 1995.
Eliot, George. “Editorial Materials”. Essays of George Eliot, edited by Thomas Pinney, Columbia University Press, 1963, p. various pages.
Eliot, George. Essays of George Eliot. Editor Pinney, Thomas, Columbia University Press, 1963.
Eliot, George. Felix Holt. W. Blackwood, 1866.
Eliot, George. Felix Holt. Editor Thomson, Fred C., Clarendon, 1980.
Eliot, George. Impressions of Theophrastus Such. W. Blackwood, 1879.
Eliot, George. Letter to Katharine S. Macquoid.
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. W. Blackwood, 1872.
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Editor Carroll, David, Clarendon, 1986.
Eliot, George, and Felicia Bonaparte. Middlemarch. Editor Carroll, David, Oxford University Press, 1997.
Eliot, George. “Preface”. The George Eliot Letters, edited by Gordon S. Haight, Yale University Press, 1954, p. 1: ix - lxxvii.
Eliot, George. Romola. Smith, Elder, 1863.
Eliot, George. Romola. Editor Brown, Andrew, Clarendon, 1993.
Eliot, George. Scenes of Clerical Life. W. Blackwood, 1858.
Eliot, George. Scenes of Clerical Life. Editor Noble, Thomas A., Clarendon, 1985.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner. W. Blackwood, 1861.
Eliot, George. “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists”. Westminster Review, Vol.
66
, pp. 442-61.
Eliot, George. “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists”. A Victorian Art of Fiction, edited by John Charles Olmsted, Garland, 1979, pp. 277-98.
Feuerbach, Ludwig. The Essence of Christianity. Translator Eliot, George, J. Chapman, 1854.
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press, 1978.
Eliot, George. The Journals of George Eliot. Editors Harris, Margaret and Judith Johnston, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Eliot, George. The Legend of Jubal. W. Blackwood, 1874.