George Eliot

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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
Literary responses George Sand
The sentiments expressed in this and similar novels earned her the nickname the Anti-Matrimonial novelist from the Foreign Quarterly Review.
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.
The future George Eliot praised Jacques for its psychological anatomy of the early days...
Reception George Sand
Many other British writers were strongly influenced by GS : Geraldine Jewsbury , Matilda Hays , Anne Ogle , Eliza Lynn Linton , Mathilde Blind , and, most notably, Emily and Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot
Family and Intimate relationships Berta Ruck
Her Welsh grandmother, born Mary Anne Mathews , whom she called Nain, had kept a youthful journal, some of which BR prints.
Ruck, Berta. An Asset to Wales. Hutchinson.
81-2ff
While in London, Nain had met Ellen Terry and George Eliot ...
Education Bernice Rubens
At university, she was President of both the student Music and Socialist societies, as well as a member of the Students' Union Council.
Gilbert, Sarah. “Bernice Rubens”. Cardiff University Magazine, Vol.
1
, No. 1.
BR later found that her education slowed her development as a writer...
Literary responses J. K. Rowling
Of course nobody could review this book without implicit or explicit reference to the Harry Potter books. What, some wondered, would devoted child readers make of the sex and swearing? The novel violently divided commentators...
Textual Features Martin Ross
This novel puts its female characters at the centre. Its tightly-interwoven social fabric is reminiscent of George Eliot ; its slow-burning, enduring passions suggest Thomas Hardy . The way that animals are used as subsidiary...
Textual Features Elizabeth Robins
As the title suggests, ER plays with gender roles in this work about a popular woman novelist who uses a male pseudonym: George Mandeville is in life Lois Wilbraham. Lois's husband, Ralph, is horrified by...
Travel Michèle Roberts
After getting married, MR travelled to Rome with her husband, where since he worked at scholarly research both during the day and in the evenings, Dorothea's marriage to Casaubon [in Eliot &s Middlemarch], and...
Publishing Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Anne Thackeray 's first novel, the anonymous The Story of Elizabeth, was serialized in the Cornhill Magazine alongside George Eliot 's Romola.
Houghton, Walter E., and Jean Harris Slingerland, editors. The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900. University of Toronto Press.
Schwartz-McKinzie, Esther, and Anne Thackeray Ritchie. “Introduction”. The Story of Elizabeth; and, Old Kensington, Thoemmes Press, p. iii - xxxii.
xix
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)...
Textual Production Anne Thackeray Ritchie
She followed it up in in her address of 10 January 1913 as President of the English Association , published in pamphlet form as A Discourse on Modern Sibyls, as well as in From...
Literary responses Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Trollope admired her work alongside that of Rhoda Broughton , though he thought her writing lazy.
Shankman, Lillian F., and Anne Thackeray Ritchie. “Biographical Commentary and Notes”. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: Journals and Letters, edited by Abigail Burnham Bloom et al., Ohio State University Press, p. various pages.
164
Robert Louis Stevenson dedicated a poem to her, inciting her to further literary biographies after reading A Book...
Literary responses Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR bridges the gap between the Victorians and the moderns. Leslie Stephen found her irritating, and harshly criticized her Dictionary of National Biography entry on Elizabeth Barrett Browning , but noted that everyone who could...
Textual Production Dorothy Richardson
In her correspondence Richardson addresses a great range of topics, including her own varied reading. She comments on women writers from Julian of Norwich through Jane Austen , Emily and Charlotte Brontë , George Eliot
Health Adrienne Rich
After her third delivery she decided to be sterilised, though she met with social disapproval even from nurses caring for her in hospital: Had yourself spayed, did you?
O’Mahoney, John. “Poet and Pioneer: Adrienne Rich”. The Guardian, pp. Review 20 - 3.
22
She later recalled her isolation during...

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