Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
George Eliot
-
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.
The poems are printed chronologically (by the author's desire rather than the editor's). MBE
's introduction says nothing about her subject's parentage or his life-history, but canvasses the issues involved in selecting from his poems...
Intertextuality and Influence
Rosa Nouchette Carey
In an interview of 1893, Helen C. Black
described RNC
as tall, slender, and erect with large blue-grey eyes with long lashes,soft dark hair, and a low, tuneful voice.
Black, Helen C. Notable Women Authors of the Day. Maclaren.
147-8
Carey revealed in this...
Intertextuality and Influence
May Sinclair
The collection also contained homages to George Eliot
and Percy Bysshe Shelley
.
Boll, Theophilus E. M. Miss May Sinclair: Novelist: A Biographical and Critical Introduction. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
39-40
Leisure and Society
Queen Victoria
Among her favourite writers were Alfred Tennyson
, Sir Walter Scott
, George Eliot
(whose The Mill on the Floss made a deep impression
Victoria, Queen. Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals. Editor Hibbert, Christopher, Penguin.
MEB
read much and widely in French as well as English. She recalled having read Eliot
's Adam Bede at least a dozen times, always weeping for Hetty Sorrel.
Wolff, Robert Lee. Sensational Victorian. Garland.
262
Literary responses
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Trollope
admired her work alongside that of Rhoda Broughton
, though he thought her writing lazy.
Shankman, Lillian F., and Anne Thackeray Ritchie. “Biographical Commentary and Notes”. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: Journals and Letters, edited by Abigail Burnham Bloom et al., Ohio State University Press, p. various pages.
164
Robert Louis Stevenson
dedicated a poem to her, inciting her to further literary biographies after reading A Book...
Literary responses
Frances Power Cobbe
The preface was admired by George Eliot
, and Lydia Maria Child
called it a truly manly production: thus we are obliged to compliment the superior sex when we seek to praise our own.
Mitchell, Sally. Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist, Journalist, Reformer. University of Virginia Press.
131
Literary responses
Mary Catherine Hume
Bessie Rayner Parkes
recommended this work to George Eliot
. Eliot was not pleased with it and wrote, Heaven preserve me from reading Miss Hume's poems! . . . I was quite cowed by their...
Literary responses
Julia Kavanagh
This work's simplicity appealed to Geraldine Jewsbury
, the reviewer for the Athenæum. She noted that it was a charming and touching story, wrought from the humblest and simplest of materials; but the interest...
Literary responses
Anne Ogle
The book was a great popular success. In the Westminster Review, George Eliot
advised readers to take up this volume, not . . . in the grave morning hours, when you want something strong...
Literary responses
Charlotte Yonge
The Daisy Chain's popularity was long-lasting, though not so intense as that of The Heir of Redclyffe. Jane Austen
's nephew James Austen-Leigh
compared it to the work of Austen and Scott
...
Literary responses
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR
bridges the gap between the Victorians and the moderns. Leslie Stephen found her irritating, and harshly criticized her Dictionary of National Biography entry on Elizabeth Barrett Browning
, but noted that everyone who could...
Literary responses
Mary Augusta Ward
MAW
's friend Benjamin Jowett
praised David Grieve as the best novel since George Eliot
.Walter Pater
also approved, but critics were not enthusiastic.
Colby, Vineta. The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century. New York University Press.
150
Sales were good, but there were some hostile reviews...
Most literary reviews were positive, some comparing MC
to Charlotte Brontë
or George Eliot
; The Spectator called the novel brilliant and exhilarating.
Colby, Vineta. “’Devoted Amateur’: Mary Cholmondeley and Red Pottage”. Essays in Criticism, Vol.
20
, No. 2, pp. 213-28.
214
An Edinburgh Review article written in 1900 praised Red Pottage in...
