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.
It is no wonder that reference books seem divided as to whether this novel depicts an oppressive marriage or an escape from one. BH
's representation of a marriage of this sort is so exaggerated...
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.
44
A great admirer of George Eliot
Textual Features
Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
With this novel LMH
perfected her sagely meditative narratorial voice (which looks forward to George Eliot
and Thomas Hardy
). She chose a plot of many characters and complicated interlocking machinations. Her initially unappealing heroine...
Publishing
Matilda Hays
When, however, MH
submitted an article on women's rights to the Westminster Review in early 1856, George Eliot
did her best to prevent its being published.
Literary responses
Matilda Hays
In a letter to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
in 1858, Bessie Rayner Parkes
wrote that all goes on like clockwork at the office, under Max, who is the most methodical of workers, & brings all...
Literary responses
Felicia Hemans
George Eliot
considered the title poem exquisite.
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press.
1: 72
Critic Gary Kelly
argues that this first-person narrative should be considered a dramatic monologue.
Hemans, Felicia. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Prose, and Letters, edited by Gary Kelly, Broadview, pp. 12 - 89; various pages.
39
Intertextuality and Influence
John Oliver Hobbes
She had been still writing it in the USA and after her return to London at the beginning of this year after its serialization had begun.
Richards, John Morgan, and John Oliver Hobbes. “Pearl Richards Craigie: Biographical Sketch by her Father”. The Life of John Oliver Hobbes, J. Murray.
33-4
A New York edition posthumously published this month...
Intertextuality and Influence
John Oliver Hobbes
JOH
's speeches and interviews regularly deal with literature. In an interview with William Archer
, she admits to admiring Arthur Wing Pinero
's characterisation of women, while noting how little individualised are some of...
Textual Production
John Oliver Hobbes
JOH
was also responsible for the George Eliot
entry in the famous tenth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, published in 1902. Written under the title Cross, Mary Ann, this is a somewhat idiosyncratic...
Intertextuality and Influence
John Oliver Hobbes
The next few years saw further novels by Hobbes, alongside drama and non-fictional works. In 1901 she published a novel entitled The Serious Wooing: A Heart's History, and in 1902 another, Love and the...
Bessie Rayner Parkes
recommended this work to George Eliot
. Eliot was not pleased with it and wrote, Heaven preserve me from reading Miss Hume's poems! . . . I was quite cowed by their...
Textual Features
Violet Hunt
In March 1910 this journal printed her story The Novelist's Revenge, an exploration both of the end of her own affair with Oswald Crawfurd
and of the broader difficulties (personal and social) faced by...
Travel
Henry James
HJ
travelled in England and Europe. While in England he introduced himself to some of the most important writers of the day, including George Eliot
, George Henry Lewes
, and Charles Darwin
.
Tóibín, Colm. “A Man with My Trouble”. London Review of Books, pp. 15-18.
16
Parker, Peter, editor. The Reader’s Companion to Twentieth-Century Writers. Fourth Estate and Helicon.
365
Gale, Robert L. A Henry James Encyclopedia. Greenwood.
xix
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...
