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.
Ward, Mary Augusta. A Writer’s Recollections. Harper and Brothers.
107
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Gaskell
She meanwhile sustained her usual energetic and gossipy flow of correspondence with a wide range of literary and personal connections. She got caught up in the speculation surrounding the split between Effie
and John Ruskin
Friends, Associates
Harriet Martineau
Marian Evans
, later George Eliot, visited HM
at her home in Ambleside.
Martineau, Harriet. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. Selected Letters, edited by Valerie Sanders, Clarendon Press, pp. vii - xxxiii, 235.
xxiii
Friends, Associates
Constance Naden
CN
was a friend of the two poets who shared the name Michael Field
(who also came from Birmingham) and of the medical doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
(who presumably did not hold against her the...
Friends, Associates
Matilda Betham-Edwards
MBE
set a great deal of store by meeting men distinguished as authors or in other fields, as a spur to literary achievement of her own. She was given to boasting of her acquaintance with...
Friends, Associates
Edward FitzGerald
Despite a somewhat reclusive life both before and after his separation from his wife within a year of their marriage, he was well connected with the Victorian literary scene, and expressed strong opinions on women...
Friends, Associates
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR
lived with the Stephens
after their marriage, and while there became a friend of such literary figures as George Meredith
, Henry James
(who described her after an early encounter as exquisitely irrational)...
Friends, Associates
Herbert Spencer
He counted Thomas Carlyle
and John Stuart Mill
among his friends. George Eliot
would have liked to make their intellectual friendship an intimate one, but he broke it off.
Mitchell, Sally, editor. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Garland Press.
Friends, Associates
Frances Power Cobbe
During her 1860 sojourn in Italy she declined an invitation to meet George Eliot
because the latter was living with a married man. Her friendship with distinguished scientist Mary Somerville
blossomed during this trip, and...
Friends, Associates
Florence Nightingale
Around this time FN
became acquainted with other literary women as well. In July 1852 George Eliot
, who had become her correspondent, remarked in another letter that there is a loftiness of mind about...
Friends, Associates
Edith J. Simcox
Elma Stuart
, who had also been an intimate friend of George Eliot
, became a close friend of EJS
. In March 1881 they spent a week together at Malvern, where they exchanged...
Sutherland, John. The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction. Longman.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Friends, Associates
Edith J. Simcox
Her connection with George Eliot
and her own political activities brought EJS
into friendly association with a number of key social figures including William Morris
, Eliza Orme
, and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
.
Fulmer, Constance M. et al. “Preface, Introduction and Editorial Materials”. A Monument to the Memory of George Eliot, Garland, pp. xi - xvii, 1.
xii
Fulmer, Constance M. “A Nineteenth Century ’Womanist’ on Gender Issues: Edith Simcox in her <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘m’>Autobiography of a Shirtmaker</span>”;. Nineteenth Century Prose, Vol.
