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.
Fraser quotes here from Eliot
's tribute in Middlemarch to the silent influence of those who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.
Fraser, Antonia. The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England. Methuen.
xiii
She opens the book proper with a submerged...
Reception
Margaret Fuller
The memoir of MF
's life which appeared (edited by Emerson
and others) the year after her death aroused interest from such people as George Eliot
and Henry Crabb Robinson
. Robinson observed that no...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Gaskell
Reviews of Cranford were positive, focusing on its charm and apparent simplicity. In the Athenæum, Henry Fothergill Chorley
commended its touches of love and kindness, of simple self-sacrifice and of true womanly tenderness.
Easson, Angus, editor. Elizabeth Gaskell: The Critical Heritage. Routledge.
194
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Gaskell
The plot elements link the novel to its moment of sensation fiction more strongly than any of EG
's other books, but are integrated with a nuanced portrait of a specific locale and a now...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Gaskell
The anonymous Concluding Remarks supplied by Frederick Greenwood
, editor of the Cornhill, set the tone for responses. He ranked the three final novels by EG
's delicate strong hand
Easson, Angus, editor. Elizabeth Gaskell: The Critical Heritage. Routledge.
458
as among 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...
Author summary
Elizabeth Gaskell
Elizabeth Gaskell
, one of the foremost fiction-writers of the mid-Victorian period, produced a corpus of seven novels, numerous short stories, and a controversial biography of Charlotte Brontë
. She wrote extensively for periodicals, as...
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
Textual Production
Elizabeth Gaskell
The idea of self-improvement through writing and reading correlates to the strong emphasis in EG
's fiction on education and the impact of environment. This was undoubtedly influenced by a Unitarian intellectual background indebted to...
Education
Mary Gawthorpe
Like all her siblings but one, MG
had been taught to read before she went to the local Church of England
infants' school, St Michael's, at the age of five.
Gawthorpe, Mary. Up Hill to Holloway. Traversity Press.
19
The whole family had...
Intertextuality and Influence
Maggie Gee
Like her first novel to see print, Gee says, this one took seven years to find a publisher. Speaking about it at a date fairly early in its long quest for print, she mentioned that...
Literary responses
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
Bound in with the Bodleian
's copy of ?1795 is a fair scribal copy of Verses addressed to the Duchess of Devonshire upon reading her poem written in Switzerland, in 23 stanzas by W. Drummond
Publishing
Emily Gerard
Dorothea thought up the plot for this book while she was supposed to be saying her morning prayers at her bedside. The sisters drafted it at a length sufficient to fill four volumes. They had...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elinor Glyn
The mysterious Lady is in fact queen in her own right of a Slavic country, and tied to a destructive marriage. Her neglectful, abusive, alcoholic, and profligate husband is king only through his marriage to...
Literary responses
Thomas Hardy
The result was the novel with which he achieved general popularity. The reviewer for The Spectator, writing before the novel's authorship was revealed, commented: If 'Far from the Madding Crowd' is not...
