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.
"George Eliot" by Universal Images Group/Contributor,Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/george-eliot-pen-name-of-mary-ann-evans-important-british-news-photo/113634333.
This collection contains two epigraphs: one from André Breton
's Nadja, and another from George Eliot
, which reads, There is no private life which is not determined by a wider public life.
qtd. in
Rich, Adrienne. Diving into the Wreck. Norton, 1973.
1
Literary responses
Mary Renault
The book came out five years after the Sexual Offences Act in Britain decriminalised many homosexual practices there, and three years after the Stonewall Inn Riots in New York marked the start of Gay Liberation...
Textual Features
Adelaide Procter
Milly's Expiation is interestingly reminiscent of Elizabeth Gaskell
's North and South, 1855 (to which the Athenæum compared it), and anticipatory of George Eliot
's Felix Holt, 1866. Milly is an idealised elder...
Education
C. E. Plumptre
Though nothing is know of CEP
's early education, in later life she kept an extensive library. On visiting her, Frederick James Gould
noted that it was selected and arranged in an impressive order which...
Intertextuality and Influence
C. E. Plumptre
CEP
takes an unconventional critical approach in applying her theory of causation to a lengthy analysis of literature. She concludes that it is when depicting the subtler operations of the human mind that George Eliot
Textual Production
Jean Plaidy
JP
had begun writing some years before this first publication.
Bennett, Catherine. “The Prime of Miss Jean Plaidy”. The Guardian, 4 July 1991, pp. 23-4.
23
During the 1930s she produced nine long novels, in which she tried to emulate her literary heroes (theBrontësEmily Brontë
, George Eliot
,...
Literary responses
Hester Lynch Piozzi
The Critical Review expressed impatience with yet another collection of memorabilia and complained that the book was deformed by colloquial barbarisms.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
61 (1786): 273
She was attacked in newspapers (even those which began with respect)...
Occupation
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
In 1876 ESP
delivered four lectures on George Eliotbefore the College of Boston University
, the new, and so far successful co-educational experiment,
qtd. in
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press, 1954–1978, 9 vols.
6: 318n6
which she described in a December letter to GE:...
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
A vocal advocate of the single life in her novels and essays, she had long admired the kind of equal marriages enjoyed by Annie Fields
and George Eliot
. For her, Eliot's art was invigorated...
Publishing
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
In later years, ESP
published essays on George Eliot
, whom she greatly admired, for Harper's Weekly (14 February 1885), The Independent (30 April 1885), and Harper's New Monthly Magazine (March 1882).
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
This novel retells The Husband of a Blue, a story by ESP
's mother, Elizabeth Wooster Stuart Phelps
, from the perspective of Avis Dobell, a wife, mother, and would-be artist who sacrifices her...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
A letter from George Eliot
written on 13 November 1877 thanked ESP
for her copy of Avis: I find the writing . . . filled with indications of that keen sensibility and observation which...
Education
Emily Jane Pfeiffer
Her family's financial troubles prevented EJP
from receiving a formal or thorough education. In her own words, education was not within the reach of the gently born who were also poor, therefore I had little...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Emily Jane Pfeiffer
The 1888 edition features a sonnet written for Shelley
, as well as one written on 29 December 1880 for George Eliot
(a week following her death), entitled The Lost Light.
Pfeiffer, Emily Jane. Sonnets and Songs (1880). Editors Fife, Cody and Terence Allan Hoagwood, Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1998.
BRP
's contributions to other periodicals include her article Everybody's Baby which appeared in Saint Pauls magazine in 1871.
Houghton, Walter E., and Jean Harris Slingerland, editors. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. University of Toronto Press, 1966–1989, 5 vols.
III: 377
In 1894 she published articles on her great-grandfather Joseph Priestley
, on George Eliot
