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 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
Literary responses Mary Catherine Hume
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...
Literary responses Julia Kavanagh
This work's simplicity appealed to Geraldine Jewsbury , the reviewer for the Athenæum. She noted that it was a charming and touching story, wrought from the humblest and simplest of materials; but the interest...
Literary responses Anne Ogle
The book was a great popular success. In the Westminster Review, George Eliot advised readers to take up this volume, not . . . in the grave morning hours, when you want something strong...
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
qtd. in
Easson, Angus, editor. Elizabeth Gaskell: The Critical Heritage. Routledge, 1991.
458
as among the...
Literary responses Anna Letitia Barbauld
Sarah Trimmer disapproved of Things by their right Names and also of The Rookery, in which she felt the community of birds showed republican tendencies. George Eliot , who read this book at seven...
Literary responses Frances Power Cobbe
The preface was admired by George Eliot , and Lydia Maria Child called it a truly manly production: thus we are obliged to compliment the superior sex when we seek to praise our own.
qtd. in
Mitchell, Sally. Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist, Journalist, Reformer. University of Virginia Press, 2004.
131
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...
Literary responses Lucas Malet
Some reviewers discerned a likeness between Lydia's devotion to her father and that of Dorothea to her first husband in George Eliot 's Middlemarch.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
153
Literary responses Margaret Oliphant
The Saturday Review suspected the true author (that is, the same who wrote Edward Irving), but thought at least the early part of Salem Chapel worthy of George Eliot . The reviewer found the...
Literary responses Hester Lynch Piozzi
The Critical Review expressed impatience with yet another collection of memorabilia and complained that the book was deformed by colloquial barbarisms.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
61 (1786): 273
She was attacked in newspapers (even those which began with respect)...
Literary responses George Henry Lewes
A hostile notice by T. H. Huxley in the Westminster Review (owned by John Chapman ) dismissed Lewes as an amateur and ranked his book below Harriet Martineau 's recent abridgement of Comte. George Eliot
Literary responses Lucas Malet
The Wages of Sin met sharply divided responses: fervent praise, or dismissal as risqué and distasteful. The Athenæum, the Times (which singled out Malet's golden gift of reticence, and a genuine appreciation of the...
Literary responses Mary Cholmondeley
Most literary reviews were positive, some comparing MC to Charlotte Brontë or George Eliot ; The Spectator called the novel brilliant and exhilarating.
qtd. in
Colby, Vineta. “’Devoted Amateur’: Mary Cholmondeley and Red Pottage”. Essays in Criticism, Vol.
20
, No. 2, Apr. 1970, pp. 213-28.
214
An Edinburgh Review article written in 1900 praised Red Pottage in...
Literary responses Mary Augusta Ward
MAW 's friend Benjamin Jowett praised David Grieve as the best novel since George Eliot .Walter Pater also approved, but critics were not enthusiastic.
qtd. in
Colby, Vineta. The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century. New York University Press, 1970.
150
Sales were good, but there were some hostile reviews...

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