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.
In a letter to GC
's father
dated 11 December 1862, George Eliot
wrote that she had read one of GC
's stories for children, So-Fat and Mew-Mew. She described it as a little...
Reception
Bessie Rayner Parkes
Bodichon
, who left much of the journal's management to BRP
after moving abroad, felt that Parkes had a wildly exaggerated sense of the importance of her work.
Rendall, Jane. “’A Moral Engine’? Feminism, Liberalism and the <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘j’>English Woman’s Journal</span>”;. Equal or Different: Women’s Politics 1800-1914, edited by Jane Rendall, Basil Blackwell, pp. 112-38.
120
George Eliot
, while acknowledging that...
Reception
Charlotte Maria Tucker
CMT
, whose works sold very well, was regarded as a major female author during the mid-Victorian period. She was incensed when in 1882 some one wrote a sketch of her life, and requested her...
Reception
Mary Augusta Ward
Understanding the difficulties of dealing in detail with Victorian religious perplexity, MAW
herself placed the book in the tradition of religious or social propaganda
Ward, Mary Augusta. A Writer’s Recollections. Harper and Brothers.
Geraldine Jewsbury
, reviewing this book for the Athenæum early the next year, was not exactly encouraging. She guessed the author's gender correctly, and judged the novel a pale imitation of Charlotte Brontë
's Jane...
Reception
Augusta Ada Byron
All this interest led to the naming of an annual Ada Lovelace Day to celebrate women in science. To mark the day in 2009 film-maker and artist Sydney Padua
created a daring duo of dauntless...
Reception
Pamela Hansford Johnson
Despite her own claim that she would not regard it as a compliment to be told she was in the mainstream of the contemporary novel,
Johnson, Pamela Hansford. Important to Me. Macmillan; Scribner.
34
The Times placed her after her death in the...
Reception
Elizabeth Gaskell
The quality of EG
's fiction was recognised early by her contemporaries. George Eliot
exempted her, along with Harriet Martineau
and Charlotte Brontë
, from the ranks of Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, noting...
EJS
dedicated a personal copy of Natural Law to George Eliot
and was extremely interested in her mentor's view of the work. Eliot reportedly offered moderate praise for the text—but given Simcox's admission that out...
Residence
Jane Hume Clapperton
She
spent almost her whole life in Edinburgh, though she apparently lived for some time in the West Midlands near Coventry, where she moved in the circle of Charles Bray
(social reformer and...
Residence
Vera Brittain
After Winifred Holtby
's death, VB
and her family moved to 2 Cheyne Walk in Chelsea: the same house that George Eliot
had lived in.
Berry, Paul, and Mark Bostridge. Vera Brittain: A Life. Chatto and Windus.
370
Textual Features
Beatrice Harraden
It is no wonder that reference books seem divided as to whether this novel depicts an oppressive marriage or an escape from one. BH
's representation of a marriage of this sort is so exaggerated...