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.
Responses to this novel were mixed. Poet William Wilfred Campbell
thought it a watered-down version of George Eliot
's Felix Holt, but The Week called Machar our most gifted authoress.
Gerson, Carole, and Agnes Maule Machar. “Introduction”. Roland Graeme, Knight, Tecumseh Press, p. vii - xxiv.
xix
A review in...
Literary responses
Augusta Webster
The Athenæum declared the play would strengthen AW
's reputation as a dramatist, calling the dialogue intellectual and subtle.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2878 (1882): 841
But although the review conceded that Webster has not strangled poetic art...
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
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Reviews were generally derogatory. The poet's admireres could not be swayed. George Eliot
, with whom HBS
had recently begun corresponding, suggested that she ought not to have brought the Byron question before the public...
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
Queen Victoria
Despite her book's popularity, when Victoria entered the arena of public writing, some Victorians criticized her prose style. After receiving copies of Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, sent by...
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.
Mitchell, Sally. Frances Power Cobbe: Victorian Feminist, Journalist, Reformer. University of Virginia Press.
131
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
Olive Schreiner
The book elicited strong reactions, most of them positive. It was highly praised by Philip Kent
, who wrote a long article about it instead of his usual shorter reviews in Life, a weekly...
Literary responses
Augusta Webster
In the 1870s and 1880s AW
was mentioned in periodicals on both sides of the Atlantic—in Harper's and Scribner's, for instance, as well as in English publications—as one of the leading women poets of...
Literary responses
Hesba Stretton
Calling the novel an offspring of a bold imagination, the Athenæum comments that it is written without labour or spurious ornament, and that certain scenes are very well described.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
2046 (1867): 44
Other reviewers compared...
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...
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...
