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.
Portrait of George Eliot, seated, after the 1881 painting of Francois Albert Durade.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Mary Augusta Ward
Mary Augusta Arnold (later MAW ) met George Eliot at a Sunday supper given by Mark and Emily Francis Pattison .
Ward, Mary Augusta. A Writer’s Recollections. Harper and Brothers, 1918.
107
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, 1988.
Friends, Associates Adelaide Kemble
The friends of her married life included the artist Leighton , sculptor Hattie Hosmer , authors Charles Hamilton Aïdé , Henry Greville , William Makepeace Thackeray , and Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning . She...
Friends, Associates Fredrika Bremer
FB's lifelong friendship with Per Böklin survived her refusal of his hand and his marriage to someone else. The influence he had on her thinking was shared by Stina, Countess Sommerhielm , and the academic...
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...
Friends, Associates May Laffan
She exchanged letters with both George Augustin Macmillan and Sir George Grove . Her social circle while she was visiting London included a surprisingly large number of literary names. Rhoda Broughton was a friend of...
Friends, Associates Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Barbara Leigh Smith was introduced to George Eliot by Bessie Rayner Parkes ; they soon became close.
Herstein, Sheila R. A Mid-Victorian Feminist: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon. Yale University Press, 1985.
106
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...
Friends, Associates Mary Linskill
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...
Friends, Associates Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
In May 1869 George Eliot recorded in her diary Bodichon's steady friendship at the time when G. H. Lewes 's son Thornie was dying of tuberculosis of the spine. Bodichon visited twice a week and...
Friends, Associates Eliza Lynn Linton
People she met at the Laurences' house included Thornton Leigh Hunt (who, with his wife, lived at the Laurences'); Smith Williams , reader for Smith and Elder ; Robert Owen , socialist; Frank Stone ...
Friends, Associates Jane Ellen Harrison
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, 1925.
44
A great admirer of George Eliot
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 Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Marks (later Ayrton) was the daughter of impoverished Jewish Polish immigrants and was a brilliant mathematician. BLSB interviewed her for a Girton scholarship, and subsequently became deeply involved with her life and family. Marks spent...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.