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.
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.
26
, No. 2, pp. 110-26.
115
Friends, Associates
Louisa Baldwin
She became interested in Eliot
's work after her sister Georgiana
introduced them.
Taylor, Ina. Victorian Sisters. Adler and Adler.
127
Friends, Associates
Anna Brownell Jameson
A close friendship developed between ABJ
and the future Geroge Eliot, who thought highly of Jameson's work. It was at a literary gathering held in ABJ's home that Barbara Leigh Smith (later Bodichon)
first met...
In these straits she found her friends worse than useless; they had never experienced poverty, far less starvation. Jenny Miles
apparently reproached her with the fact that George Eliot
, Charlotte Yonge
, Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Friends, Associates
Henry James
HJ
met George Eliot
in May 1869 and wrote memorably to his father of the most powerful beauty residing in her vast ugliness, which had made him end . . . in falling in...
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press.
106
Friends, Associates
Linda Villari
LV
and her husband were both friends of Vernon Lee
, accepting her hospitality and moving in the same circles.
Gunn, Peter. Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856-1935. Oxford University Press.
96
Lee corresponded with LV
from the late 1870s to the early 1880s and discussed...
Friends, Associates
Julia Wedgwood
This friendship was cemented during visits to Linlathen in Forfarshire, the home of Thomas Erskine
, who was himself a major spiritual influence on JW
. Her letters to Gurney mention meetings with Darwin
Friends, Associates
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
In July that year her friendship with George Eliot
had been cemented and her opinion of G. H. Lewes
radically improved by a seaside visit to this unconventional couple at Tenby in Wales. (By...
Distinguished guests at Newnham
at this time included Ruskin
and Turgenev
; JEH
recalls giving them tours of the college in her Reminiscences of a Student's Life.
Harrison, Jane Ellen. Reminiscences of a Student’s Life. Hogarth Press.
44
A great admirer of George Eliot
Friends, Associates
Eliza Lynn Linton
Eliza Lynn met a number of women authors who were once applauded but later complacently forgotten . . . . as literary fossils.
Linton, Eliza Lynn, and Beatrice Harraden. My Literary Life. Hodder and Stoughton.
85
She contended that Women who wrote were then few and far...