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.
The Wages of Sin met sharply divided responses: fervent praise, or dismissal as risqué and distasteful. The Athenæum, the Times (which singled out Malet's golden gift of reticence, and a genuine appreciation of the...
Literary responses
Mary Augusta Ward
Reviews were positive. Novelist Margaret Woods
felt that the archaic world it depicted was the root of Marcella's charm.
Watters, Tamie, and Mary Augusta Ward. “Introduction”. Marcella, Virago, p. vii - xvi.
xvi
Margaret Oliphant
criticised the author in Blackwood's for asking readers to surrender all our...
Literary responses
Margaret Oliphant
The Saturday Review suspected the true author (that is, the same who wrote Edward Irving), but thought at least the early part of Salem Chapel worthy of George Eliot
. The reviewer found the...
Literary responses
Charlotte Brontë
CB
received inquiries about the novel's ambiguous conclusion and the fate of M. Paul; she would not say which way the book was to end, commenting wrily that Drowning and Matrimony are the fearful alternatives...
Literary Setting
Olive Schreiner
Cherry Clayton
believes the novel's fictional English setting, Greenwood, was influenced by the English landscapes in the works of Hardy
, George Eliot
, and the BrontësEmily BrontëAnne Brontë
. Schreiner herself had not yet been to...
Material Conditions of Writing
Jessie White Mario
George Eliot
wrote to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
regarding JWM
's writing and her convalescence from a nervous condition, which she thought called for absolute rest.
Daniels, Elizabeth Adams. Jessie White Mario: Risorgimento Revolutionary. Ohio University Press.
142n3
Material Conditions of Writing
Edith J. Simcox
EJS
began work on what was then titled Vignettes in March 1880, shortly before George Eliot
's marriage to John Walter Cross
, and she found solace in writing them: I think of her without...
Occupation
Marion Moss
One of her pupils, her niece Hertha Ayrton
(1854-1923), became a suffragist and a friend of Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
and George Eliot
. She obtained only third-class degree results at the end her studies...
Occupation
Inez Bensusan
IB
's postwar career has received almost no attention. She continued to act during and after the war. Her acting credentials include two silent films directed by Maurice Elvey
, The Grit of a Jew...
Early in his career, CD
received praise for his work as a geologist, but as a naturalist he achieved fame—after he had undertaken a scientific expedition to South America and especially the Galapagos Islands—for...
Occupation
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
His attention to questions of power and representation helped spawn poststructuralist theory. His unregenerate misogyny—expressed in contempt for little bluestockings
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Michael Tanner. Twilight of the Idols; and, The Anti-Christ. Translator Holligdale, Reginald John, Penguin.
79
like George Eliot
, for George Sand
as a prolific writing-cow,
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, and Michael Tanner. Twilight of the Idols; and, The Anti-Christ. Translator Holligdale, Reginald John, Penguin.
80
and...
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,
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press.
6: 318n6
which she described in a December letter to GE:...
Occupation
Angela Brazil
AB
remained silent about her brief foray into paid work, as a governess.
Freeman, Gillian. The Schoolgirl Ethic: The Life and Work of Angela Brazil. Allen Lane.
54n
At Bolton Le Moors she began keeping house for her brother Walter. She worked as a conservationist to preserve various monuments...
