George Eliot

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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.
Portrait of George Eliot, seated, after the 1881 painting of Francois Albert Durade.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
She read voraciously, preferring writers with the geographical rootedness which she herself lacked: George Eliot , Thomas Hardy , Charles Dickens , and from beyond the English tradition Marcel Proust , James Joyce , Henry James
Education Flora Macdonald Mayor
Although FMM 's father was, for the most part, more concerned with her fragile health than her academic development, the twin sisters received some home-schooling from their mother to quite a high level, since she...
Education Beryl Bainbridge
BB described her reading at nine years old as a mixture: George Eliot and children's writers like Richmal Crompton and Susan Coolidge (Sarah Woolsey ): Just William, What Katy Did, The Mill...
Education Mary Gawthorpe
Like all her siblings but one, MG had been taught to read before she went to the local Church of England infants' school, St Michael's, at the age of five.
Gawthorpe, Mary. Up Hill to Holloway. Traversity Press, 1962.
19
The whole family had...
Education Louisa Baldwin
Following her marriage, she studied German, French, and Italian, as well as the works of Shakespeare and the novels of George Eliot .
Taylor, Ina. Victorian Sisters. Adler and Adler, 1987.
114-15, 127
Education Charlotte Mew
CM later attended lectures at University College, London , and read widely in English and French. She particularly admired George Eliot .
Mew, Charlotte. “Introduction”. Collected Poems and Prose, edited by Val Warner, Carcanet and Virago, 1981, p. ix - xxii.
ix
Education Jessie Fothergill
She acquired much knowledge through her voracious consumption of books: I loved books, and read all that I could get hold of, and have had many a rebuke for poring over those books instead of...
Education Alice Meynell
In the summer of 1852 Elizabeth and Alice Thompson (later AM ) began their education under their father's instruction. Recording her daughters' lessons, Christiana Thompson writes, Dear little angels do their writing . ....
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
Education Viola Meynell
After leaving school at sixteen, VM read widely on her own, especially English authors: George Eliot , Dickens , George Meredith , Arnold Bennett , John Galsworthy , and Thomas Hardy .
MacKenzie, Raymond N. A Critical Biography of English Novelist Viola Meynell, 1885-1956. Edwin Mellen, 2002.
61, 65
Education Toru Dutt
TD and Aru were briefly enrolled at a boarding school in Nice where they studied French.
Rao, Raja, and Toru Dutt. “Aru and Toru”. Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan, Writers Workshop, 1972.
After moving to England they continued their studies and attended the Higher Lectures for Women series begun by Henry Sidgwick
Education Kate Clanchy
As a child KC loved Victorian stories for girls—Frances Hodgson Burnett 's A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, Sarah Chauncey Woolsey (or Susan Coolidge)'s What Katy Did, and Louisa May Alcott
Education Bernice Rubens
At university, she was President of both the student Music and Socialist societies, as well as a member of the Students' Union Council.
Gilbert, Sarah. “Bernice Rubens”. Cardiff University Magazine, Vol.
1
, No. 1.
BR later found that her education slowed her development as a writer...
Education Simone de Beauvoir
SB knew her alphabet at three, and learned to read quickly once she suddenly perceived that the letters were symbols.
Beauvoir, Simone de. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. Translator Kirkup, James, Penguin, 2001.
20
Later, the scanty resources of my city childhood could not compete with the riches...
Education Mary Lavin
It was, she said later, through reading that I passed from childhood to adulthood, first through a chance encounter with Eliot 's Adam Bede (and that was the end of the school stories)...

Timeline

December 1855
Barbara Leigh Smith , later Bodichon, founded the Married Women's Property Committee (sometimes called the Women's Committee) to draw up a petition for a married women's property bill.
By December 1855
George Meredith published his first work of fiction, The Shaving of Shagpat: An Arabian Entertainment.
14 March 1856
A petitionfor Reform of the Married Women's Property Law, organized by the Married Women's Property Committee and signed by many prominent women, was presented to both Houses of Parliament.
By 2 August 1856
Jane Margaret Strickland published a novel, Adonijah, a tale of the Jewish Dispersion; it was shortly attacked by George Eliot in Silly Novels by Lady Novelists as one of the deplorable types of fiction...
1858
Rachel Felix , the celebrated tragic actress, died of pulmonary consumption.
February 1858
Bessie Rayner Parkes described to George Eliot , in a letter, the limited company established by the Langham Place group to support The English Woman's Journal.
1861
A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued what seems to be the earliest version of a game called Authors, whose object was to collect sets of cards bearing the names of writers and the...
By 25 October 1862
Victor Hugo completed the publication in successive parts of his novelLes Misérables.
October 1864
The Working Women's College opened in Queen Street, London.
7 February 1865
The first issue appeared of George Smith 's innovative evening newspaper, The Pall Mall Gazette.
1871-1872
A civil trial against the Tichborne estate trustees was brought to court and was eventually lost by the Tichborne Claimant who alleged that he was heir to the Tichborne estate in Hampshire.
January 1873
Jane Elizabeth Senior was appointed as a (temporary) government inspector of pauper schools and workhouses: the first woman to hold this office.
July 1875
Hercegovina (at this date part of Bosnia), rebelled against rule by Turkey; in 1876 Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro also rose.
October 1877
Charles Kegan Paul arranged to purchase the publishing firm of his employer H. S. King to form Kegan Paul and Co.
1878
The first telephone company in the UK began operations, at Chislehurst, Kent; it enabled private communication by phone between two points only.

Texts

Strauss, David Friedrich. The Life of Jesus. Translator Eliot, George, Chapman Brothers, 1846.
Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. W. Blackwood, 1860.
Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Clarendon, 1980.
Eliot, George, and W. B. Rands. The Poems of George Eliot. Thomas Y. Crowell, 1884.
Eliot, George. The Spanish Gypsy. W. Blackwood, 1868.