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.
Mr Kung despised fiction and the Sydenstricker library contained only the supposedly factual Plutarch
's Lives and Foxe
's Book of Martyrs, but Pearl read fiction avidly in both Chinese and English, devouring Shakespeare
Literary responses
Frances Hodgson Burnett
The American reviews were highly flattering. The reviewer for the Boston Transcript could think of no more powerful work from a woman's hand in the English language, not even George Eliot
at her best.
Gerzina, Gretchen. Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chatto and Windus.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
All this interest led to the naming of an annual Ada Lovelace Day to celebrate women in science. To mark the day in 2009 film-maker and artist Sydney Padua
created a daring duo of dauntless...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jessie Ellen Cadell
The reader meets Ida as an immature girl of sixteen who, with three elder brothers, wishes herself a boy. Her mother is a clergyman's widow, and she has had an unconventional, economical upbringing, largely abroad...
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...
Textual Production
Jane Welsh Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
was the first to prepare a collection of JWC
's letters for publication. Shortly after her death in 1866—full of sorrow at her loss and regret at his neglect of her—he began assembling...
Textual Production
Willa Cather
In the 1920s WC
was working for a maximum of three hours a day, banishing her work from her mind during the rest of day, but keeping herself fresh for it. She said her only...
Literary responses
Mary Cholmondeley
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...
Education
Agatha Christie
By the time Agatha was born, Clara Miller
believed that girls ought not to learn to read before the age of eight. Defiantly, Agatha taught herself to read at five. She eagerly devoured Lewis Carroll
The title for the book was taken in part from George Eliot
, who originally coined the phrase meliorist when a friend playfully referred to her as an optimist: I will not answer to the...
Literary responses
Jane Hume Clapperton
A review by Vernon Lee
for The Academy was similarly positive, calling JHC
's book an important,valuable, and noble production, whose primary contribution was its originality: without being actually original in any separate...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jane Hume Clapperton
JHC
also writes approvingly of free love, particularly George Eliot
's decision to join in domestic partnership with George Henry Lewes
. Eliot's decision, she says, was clearly motivated by Lewes's legal inability to obtain...