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.

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Education Virginia Woolf
Between 1 January and 30 June 1897, her reading included but was not limited to the following: Charlotte Brontë , Lady Barlow (a commentator on Charles Darwin ), Dinah Mulock Craik , George Eliot ,...
Education Amy Levy
At some time during her girlhood AL listed her favourite poets as all men, while her favourite prose writers included Charlotte Brontë , Elizabeth Gaskell , George Eliot , and Anne Thackeray Ritchie .
Beckman, Linda Hunt. Amy Levy: Her Life and Letters. Ohio University Press.
16
Education Susan Tweedsmuir
She was, however, always reading as a child: she and her sister had few books, but knew by heart whole chapters of the ones they did have. As a child Susan hated Mrs Mortimer 's...
Education Margaret Atwood
She attended elementary school, and then from 1952 Leaside High School in Toronto, both in the Protestant public school system operating in Ontario alongside a Catholic one. She and her schoolmates got prayers and...
Education Frances Power Cobbe
Her continuing studies, particularly of theology, benefitted from access to Archbishop Marsh's Library in Dublin (though it was ostensibly open only to gentlemen and graduates). Her reading at this period may have included Marian Evans, later George Eliot
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 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...
Education Alison Uttley
Alice Jane Taylor (later AU ) was a strong-willed child who set her own agenda. She later remembered a trial of wills, at the age of two, with her godmother, which ended not in her...
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.
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.
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, p. ix - xxii.
ix
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 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...

Timeline

By December 1855: George Meredith published his first work...

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By December 1855

George Meredith published his first work of fiction, The Shaving of Shagpat: An Arabian Entertainment.

December 1855: Barbara Leigh Smith, later Bodichon, founded...

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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.

14 March 1856: A petition for Reform of the Married Women's...

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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,...

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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,...

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1858

Rachel Felix , the celebrated tragic actress, died of pulmonary consumption.

February 1858: Bessie Rayner Parkes described to George...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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October 1864

The Working Women's College opened in Queen Street, London.

7 February 1865: The first issue appeared of George Smith's...

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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...

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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...

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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),...

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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...

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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...

National or international item

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.