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.
After completing this novel GS
wrote, I'd like a really big [writing] table, it seems to me I've got the right to it now.
Kobak, Annette. “Mme de Staël and Fanny Burney”. The Burney Journal, Vol.
4
, pp. 12-35.
19
Corinne was enormously influential for nineteenth-century women writers. The model...
Friends, Associates
Herbert Spencer
He counted Thomas Carlyle
and John Stuart Mill
among his friends. George Eliot
would have liked to make their intellectual friendship an intimate one, but he broke it off.
Mitchell, Sally, editor. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Garland Press.
politics
Herbert Spencer
In Spencer's view, women's inferiority was clearly evolutionary, not cultural. In The Study of Sociology and The Principles of Sociology, he claims that women's biology (or their reproductive role) impairs their intellectual and physical...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ali Smith
Smith began working on There But For The following her father's death in 2010, in a crazy time of mourning, where nothing held still and everything changed. It was written, she says, in a kind...
It was an act of great courage for MS
to make herself so conspicuous. Cicely Hamilton
and Catherine Gasquoine Hartley
led the procession. Members of the WWSL each carried a goose quill and a bannerette...
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
Reception
Edith J. Simcox
Biographer Keith Alexander McKenzie
considers this to be the only one of EJS
's works that retains the power to interest readers, partly because of the style, partly because of the sensitive and often striking...
Material Conditions of Writing
Edith J. Simcox
EJS
began work on what was then titled Vignettes in March 1880, shortly before George Eliot
's marriage to John Walter Cross
, and she found solace in writing them: I think of her without...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Edith J. Simcox
The work's episodes include At Anchor, Eclipse, Consolations, and The Shadow of Death.
McKenzie, Keith Alexander, and Gordon S. Haight. Edith Simcox and George Eliot. Oxford University Press.
66-70
Several of the stories explore facets of EJS
's feelings for George Eliot
, while others speak...
Textual Production
Edith J. Simcox
At the urgings of her publisher, Nikolaus Trübner
, EJS
began translating German idealist philosopher Eduard von Hartmann
's Philosophy of the Unconscious. She abandoned her plans upon discovering that her publication would not...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Edith J. Simcox
Despite its working title, Autobiography of a Shirtmaker, EJS
wrote that this record was not the autobiography of a shirtmaker but [of] a love.
Simcox, Edith J. A Monument to the Memory of George Eliot. Editors Fulmer, Constance M. and Margaret E. Barfield, Garland.
32
Indeed, its first section is a devoted record of...
Literary responses
Edith J. Simcox
As noted by Laurie Zierer
in Broomfield
and Mitchell
's anthology of Victorian women writers, EJS
's connection with George Eliot
has saved her from permanent obscurity, [but] her stature as a Victorian writer and...
Family and Intimate relationships
Edith J. Simcox
In connection with writing a review of Middlemarch for The Academy, EJS
met George Eliot
.
McKenzie, Keith Alexander, and Gordon S. Haight. Edith Simcox and George Eliot. Oxford University Press.
84
Haight, Gordon S., and Keith Alexander McKenzie. “Introduction”. Edith Simcox and George Eliot, Oxford University Press, p. xi - xviii.
xiii
Travel
Edith J. Simcox
Following the death of George Eliot
, EJS
explored the Coventry area, gathering information from Eliot's friends and relations in preparation for a projected biography.
McKenzie, Keith Alexander, and Gordon S. Haight. Edith Simcox and George Eliot. Oxford University Press.