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.
As noted by Laurie Zierer
in Broomfield
and Mitchell
's anthology of Victorian women writers, EJS
's connection with George Eliot
has saved her from permanent obscurity, [but] her stature as a Victorian writer and...
Literary responses
Jane Hume Clapperton
A review by Vernon Lee
for The Academy was similarly positive, calling JHC
's book an important,valuable, and noble production, whose primary contribution was its originality: without being actually original in any separate...
Literary responses
Matilda Hays
In a letter to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
in 1858, Bessie Rayner Parkes
wrote that all goes on like clockwork at the office, under Max, who is the most methodical of workers, & brings all...
Literary responses
Dinah Mulock Craik
Some felt she wrote too much too fast. Elizabeth Gaskell
commented in a letter of 1851, I wish she had some other means of support than writing, which must be pumped up instead of bubbling...
Literary responses
Anne Mozley
George Eliot
not only praised this review in a letter, but also instructed her publisher to send a copy of her next novel, The Mill on the Floss, to Bentley's
expressly so that it...
Literary responses
Michelene Wandor
The assessment by Nigella Lawson
in the Times Literary Supplement was astonishingly harsh. She argued that the domestic dramatic monologue form used here demands sureness, control and verbal dexterity which MW
did not possess.
Lawson, Nigella. “Collusion and Intrusion”. Times Literary Supplement, No. 4324, p. 162.
162
Literary responses
Frances Hodgson Burnett
The American reviews were highly flattering. The reviewer for the Boston Transcript could think of no more powerful work from a woman's hand in the English language, not even George Eliot
at her best.
Gerzina, Gretchen. Frances Hodgson Burnett. Chatto and Windus.
67
Literary responses
Felicia Hemans
George Eliot
considered the title poem exquisite.
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press.
1: 72
Critic Gary Kelly
argues that this first-person narrative should be considered a dramatic monologue.
Hemans, Felicia. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Prose, and Letters, edited by Gary Kelly, Broadview, pp. 12 - 89; various pages.
39
Literary responses
Isa Craig
One of the readers of the English Woman's Journal, Marian Lewes
, wrote to its proprietor, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
, to say how deeply she had been affected by Infant Seamstresses. Supposing...
Literary responses
Charlotte Yonge
The Daisy Chain's popularity was long-lasting, though not so intense as that of The Heir of Redclyffe. Jane Austen
's nephew James Austen-Leigh
compared it to the work of Austen and Scott
...
Literary responses
Harriet Martineau
This book resulted in public outcry. Douglas Jerrold
responded with wit: There is no God, and Harriet Martineau is his Prophet.
Webb, Robert Kiefer. Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian. Columbia University Press.
299
Mary Howitt
came to regret her contribution to the most awful book that...
Literary responses
Mary Augusta Ward
MAW
's friend Benjamin Jowett
praised David Grieve as the best novel since George Eliot
.Walter Pater
also approved, but critics were not enthusiastic.
Colby, Vineta. The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century. New York University Press.
150
Sales were good, but there were some hostile reviews...
The anonymous Concluding Remarks supplied by Frederick Greenwood
, editor of the Cornhill, set the tone for responses. He ranked the three final novels by EG
's delicate strong hand
Easson, Angus, editor. Elizabeth Gaskell: The Critical Heritage. Routledge.
458
as among the...
Literary responses
Jennifer Dawson
The Times Literary Supplement review described The Cold Country as a book in which JD
was a novelist with a mission, and in this respect positioned her with great writers such as George Eliot
...
