George Henry Lewes

-
Standard Name: Lewes, George Henry
Used Form: G. H. Lewes
At GHL 's death in 1878, Anthony Trollope praised him as journalist, editor, critic, philosophical populariser, biographer, and scientific writer.
Ashton, Rosemary. G. H. Lewes: A Life. Clarendon Press, 1991.
279
One of the leading Victorian men of letters, he is nevertheless remembered chiefly as the partner of George Eliot .

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Matilda Betham-Edwards
Because of her mother's early death, MBE , she said later, was largely self-educated, her teachers being plenty of the best books.
Black, Helen C. Notable Women Authors of the Day. D. Bryce, 1893.
124
Apart from the family library, a half-guinea annual subscription to the Ipswich Mechanics' Institution
Family and Intimate relationships Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Following his death Charles Collins (Wilkie 's brother), with his wife (the former Kate Dickens ) and family, were the main sources of support for ATR and her sister. Between 1,500 and 2,000 mourners...
Family and Intimate relationships George Eliot
Marian Evans (later GE ) first met her future partner George Henry Lewes , as a member of the literary circles in which she now moved.
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press, 1954–1978.
1: 366-7
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
92
Family and Intimate relationships Edith J. Simcox
Her feelings for the novelist developed to a passionate intensity: her love was idolatrous, to use her own word. For several years she regularly and formally celebrated the anniversary of her first encounter with...
Family and Intimate relationships George Eliot
Marian Evans (later GE ) left London for Germany with George Henry Lewes , the married writer, editor, and scientist with whom she was to live for the rest of his life.
Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. W.W. Norton, 1995.
178
Family and Intimate relationships Christina Stead
Within a year CS had become the lover of her American manager at work. William James Blech (later Blake) , whom she called Wilhelm at first and later Bill. He was both an investment...
Family and Intimate relationships George Eliot
GE informed her brother Isaac of the relationship between her and Lewes : she made no pretence they were actually married, but she called him her husband and signed Marian Lewes.
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press, 1954–1978.
2: 331-2
Family and Intimate relationships George Eliot
A year and a half after the death of her partner George Henry Lewes , GE got married: to their young friend and banker John Walter Cross , in an Anglican ceremony at St George's...
Family and Intimate relationships George Eliot
GE was devastated when George Henry Lewes , her partner of twenty-four years, died on 30 November 1878 at the age of sixty-one. She grieved intensely, withdrew from social contact, edited Lewes's unfinished work for...
Family and Intimate relationships George Eliot
The two had been corresponding for some time before the first letter that survives from GE , written on 16 October 1879. It is transparently a love-letter. It speaks of the coldness of the sunshine...
Friends, Associates Harriet Martineau
After HM fanned the gossip ensuing from Evans's liaison with George Henry Lewes the personal relationship foundered, although a positive literary influence on the younger writer survived.
Blain, Virginia. “Thinking Back Through our Aunts: Harriet Martineau and Tradition in Women’s Writing”. Women: A Cultural Review, Vol.
1
, pp. 223-39.
passim
Friends, Associates Matilda Betham-Edwards
MBE set a great deal of store by meeting men distinguished as authors or in other fields, as a spur to literary achievement of her own. She was given to boasting of her acquaintance with...
Friends, Associates Geraldine Jewsbury
She and her brother entertained such visitors as George Henry Lewes , dramatist Westland Marston , Italian exile and journalist Antonio Gallenga , manufacturer William Edward Forster , mechanical engineer Joseph Whitworth , poet and...
Friends, Associates Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Their friendship proved to be life-long. BLSB —though she said she could offer no advice while Eliot was making the contentious decision to live with George Henry Lewes —promised to stand by her friend no...
Friends, Associates Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
In July that year her friendship with George Eliot had been cemented and her opinion of G. H. Lewes radically improved by a seaside visit to this unconventional couple at Tenby in Wales. (By...

Timeline

2 January 1828
The first issue of the Athenæum, founded by James Silk Buckingham , appeared.
July 1835
The first issue of The British and Foreign Review; or, European Quarterly Journal was published.
1851
French medical researcher Charles-Edouard Brown-Séquard experimented with the effects of blood transfusion on the responsiveness of nerves in human corpses.
30 March 1851
G. H. Lewes and Thornton Hunt launched a progressive weekly called The Leader; it ran until 31 December 1859.
January 1860
The Cornhill Magazine, an influential literary monthly, first appeared in London with Thackeray as editor and contributor; the first issue sold 110,000 copies.
7 February 1865
The first issue appeared of George Smith 's innovative evening newspaper, The Pall Mall Gazette.
15 May 1865
The first issue of the Fortnightly Review appeared, edited by George Henry Lewes .
7 October 1865
Governor Edward Eyre ruthlessly suppressed a rebellion which began at Morant Bay in Jamaica.
1878
The first telephone company in the UK began operations, at Chislehurst, Kent; it enabled private communication by phone between two points only.

Texts

Lewes, George Henry. Comte’s Philosophy of the Sciences. H. G. Bohn, 1853.
Lewes, George Henry. Problems of Life and Mind. Trübner, 1879.
Lewes, George Henry. “The Lady Novelists”. A Victorian Art of Fiction: Essays on the Novel in British Periodicals 1851-1869, edited by John Charles Olmsted, Garland, 1979, pp. 39-51.
Lewes, George Henry. The Life and Works of Goethe. D. Nutt, 1855.