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.
The Daisy Chain's popularity was long-lasting, though not so intense as that of The Heir of Redclyffe. Jane Austen
's nephew James Austen-Leigh
compared it to the work of Austen and Scott
...
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
Mary Cholmondeley
Most literary reviews were positive, some comparing MC
to Charlotte Brontë
or George Eliot
; The Spectator called the novel brilliant and exhilarating.
Colby, Vineta. “’Devoted Amateur’: Mary Cholmondeley and Red Pottage”. Essays in Criticism, Vol.
20
, No. 2, pp. 213-28.
214
An Edinburgh Review article written in 1900 praised Red Pottage in...
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
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.
Colby, Vineta. The Singular Anomaly: Women Novelists of the Nineteenth Century. New York University Press.
150
Sales were good, but there were some hostile reviews...
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...
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
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
A letter from George Eliot
written on 13 November 1877 thanked ESP
for her copy of Avis: I find the writing . . . filled with indications of that keen sensibility and observation which...
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 Augusta Ward
Reviews were positive. Novelist Margaret Woods
felt that the archaic world it depicted was the root of Marcella's charm.
Watters, Tamie, and Mary Augusta Ward. “Introduction”. Marcella, Virago, p. vii - xvi.
xvi
Margaret Oliphant
criticised the author in Blackwood's for asking readers to surrender all our...
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
Charlotte Brontë
CB
received inquiries about the novel's ambiguous conclusion and the fate of M. Paul; she would not say which way the book was to end, commenting wrily that Drowning and Matrimony are the fearful alternatives...
Literary responses
Jessie Fothergill
The subject-matter led one reviewer to comment that JFdoes not deal with the most agreeable of subjects.
