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.
This book resulted in public outcry. Douglas Jerrold
responded with wit: There is no God, and Harriet Martineau is his Prophet.
Webb, Robert Kiefer. Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian. Columbia University Press.
299
Mary Howitt
came to regret her contribution to the most awful book that...
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...
Literary responses
Anna Steele
In a lengthy review the Times noted that while Gardenhurst had many faults typical of first novels (citing other examples from Sir Walter Scott
, George Eliot
, and Charles Dickens
), it nonetheless has...
Literary responses
Jennifer Dawson
The Times Literary Supplement review described The Cold Country as a book in which JD
was a novelist with a mission, and in this respect positioned her with great writers such as George Eliot
...
Literary responses
Pamela Hansford Johnson
This novel marked a step forward in the public valuation of PHJ
. Walter Allen
called it one of the best novels of our time.
The sentiments expressed in this and similar novels earned her the nickname the Anti-Matrimonial novelist from the Foreign Quarterly Review.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
The future George Eliot
praised Jacques for its psychological anatomy of the early days...
Literary responses
Agnes Maule Machar
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
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
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...
Leisure and Society
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
MEB
read much and widely in French as well as English. She recalled having read Eliot
's Adam Bede at least a dozen times, always weeping for Hetty Sorrel.
Wolff, Robert Lee. Sensational Victorian. Garland.
262
Leisure and Society
Queen Victoria
Among her favourite writers were Alfred Tennyson
, Sir Walter Scott
, George Eliot
(whose The Mill on the Floss made a deep impression
Victoria, Queen. Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals. Editor Hibbert, Christopher, Penguin.
The authors use as epigraph a passage from Sylvia Plath
's Three Women: a Poem for Three Voices.
Oakley, Ann et al. Miscarriage. Fontana.
9
They then begin with some shocking statistics. Nobody knows what proportion miscarriages bear to live...
Intertextuality and Influence
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
This story of infidelity features an Italian financier who as a furiously jealous foreigner is compared to Shakespeare's Othello. (At least Provana is not black
Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. Beyond These Voices. Hutchinson.
68
comments one character.) There the resemblance ends, for...
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...
