George Eliot

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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.
  • BirthName: Mary Anne Evans
  • Nicknames: Polly
    Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
    19
    This was then the standard familiar form of Mary.
    ; Pollian
    This variant form of Polly, taken up by her early intellectual friends, converted a gentle domestic nickname into a joking reference to the fictional, demonic warrior Apollyon.
    Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
    19, 50

  • Self-constructed: Mary Ann Evans
    Her father used this form of her name in his diary, and GE herself was using it by the time of her sister's wedding on May 30, 1837.
    ; Marian Evans
    GE made this change of spelling in 1851.
    Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
    80, 393n10
    ; Marian Evans Lewes
    After 1854 GE signed her name this way, or as Mrs Lewes, to assert the marital nature of her relationship with George Henry Lewes, despite the fact that he had a wife living. After his death she changed her name by deed poll to Mary Ann Evans Lewes, which reverted to an early spelling of her first names.
    Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
    368
  • Married: Cross
  • Pseudonyms: George Eliot; Felix Holt
Portrait of George Eliot, seated, after the 1881 painting of Francois Albert Durade.

Milestones

22 November 1819

GE was born Mary Anne Evans at South Farm, Arbury, Warwickshire, the youngest child in her family to survive.
Haight, Gordon S. George Eliot: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1968.
3
Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. W.W. Norton, 1995.
7
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
12

1 January 1869

GE recorded her intention of writing the novel called Middlemarch (named after the provincial centre in which it is set) which is overall her best known and most respected work.
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press, 1954–1978, 9 vols.
5: 3

1 December 1871

The first of eight books (independently bound half-volumes) of GE 's large novel Middlemarch appeared; the others followed at two-monthly intervals.
Hands, Timothy. A George Eliot Chronology. G. K. Hall, 1989.
123
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
312
Borne Back Daily. 2001, http://borneback.com/ .
1 December 2009

December 1872

The eighth and final book of GE 's Middlemarch appeared, causing publisher John Blackwood to write that the year would be remembered for this event.
Hands, Timothy. A George Eliot Chronology. G. K. Hall, 1989.
127
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press, 1954–1978, 9 vols.
5: 352-3

22 December 1880

GE died at 4 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, only seven months after her late marriage, of a throat infection coming on top of advancing kidney disease.
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
379
Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. W.W. Norton, 1995.
639

Biography

Birth and Family

22 November 1819

GE was born Mary Anne Evans at South Farm, Arbury, Warwickshire, the youngest child in her family to survive.
Haight, Gordon S. George Eliot: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1968.
3
Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. W.W. Norton, 1995.
7
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
12

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