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
Travel Michèle Roberts
After getting married, MR travelled to Rome with her husband, where since he worked at scholarly research both during the day and in the evenings, Dorothea's marriage to Casaubon [in Eliot &s Middlemarch], and...
Travel Mathilde Blind
Her preface to The Heather on Fire reports another visit, to the Isle of Arran in the summer of 1884.
Blind, Mathilde. The Heather on Fire. Walter Scott.
3
She also visited Warwickshire in the course of research for writing the life of...
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
Travel Jessie White Mario
Her recovery from a nervous condition was hampered when Bodichon also fell ill and needed a nurse, causing Jessie to assume that role. It was at this time that she was introduced to George Eliot
Travel Edith J. Simcox
Following the death of George Eliot , EJS explored the Coventry area, gathering information from Eliot's friends and relations in preparation for a projected biography.
McKenzie, Keith Alexander, and Gordon S. Haight. Edith Simcox and George Eliot. Oxford University Press.
115
Travel Matilda Betham-Edwards
MBE spent a week with George Eliot , George Henry Lewes , and Barbara Bodichon at an old rectory at Swanmore in the Isle of Wight, which Bodichon had rented for a Christmas holiday.
Betham-Edwards, Matilda. Reminiscences. G. Redway, p. vi, 354 pp.
250-1
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Sophie Veitch
Religious Novels and the Christian Ideal laments that religious novels so seldom put forward truly admirable patterns of life, but instead encourage phariseeism and self-satisfaction. SV dissects with some disgust Ministering Children by Maria Louisa Charlesworth
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Augusta Webster
She omits reviews from this collection, but provides readers with an opportunity to consider literary topics. The Translation of Poetry argues that because [i]n poetry the form of the thought is part of the thought...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Edith J. Simcox
The work's episodes include At Anchor, Eclipse, Consolations, and The Shadow of Death.
McKenzie, Keith Alexander, and Gordon S. Haight. Edith Simcox and George Eliot. Oxford University Press.
66-70
Several of the stories explore facets of EJS 's feelings for George Eliot , while others speak...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Edith J. Simcox
Despite its working title, Autobiography of a Shirtmaker, EJS wrote that this record was not the autobiography of a shirtmaker but [of] a love.
Simcox, Edith J. A Monument to the Memory of George Eliot. Editors Fulmer, Constance M. and Margaret E. Barfield, Garland.
32
Indeed, its first section is a devoted record of...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anthony Trollope
The critical opinions he voices here are often cited. Chapter 13, entitled On English Novelists of the Present Day, gives first place to Thackeray and second to George Eliot . On her he voices...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde
It contains many previously published reviews and essays, including her thoughts on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers. In a review, JFLW calls Harriet Martineauone of the cleverest female intellects of the age,
Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde,. Notes on Men, Women, and Books. Ward and Downey.
112
but finds...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Bowen
She writes admiringly of Jane Austen , but far less so of George Eliot , whom she regards as over-intellectual.
Glendinning, Victoria. Elizabeth Bowen. Alfred A. Knopf.
81-2
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Vernon Lee
In her first essay, Lee offers a summary analysis of the English novelistic tradition. Judging them especially, though not entirely, on their treatments of morality, she evaluates writers including Jane Austen , Maria Edgeworth ,...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Eliza Lynn Linton
The book makes disparaging allusion to George Eliot and to the dislikable Robert Brabant .
Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. Hamish Hamilton.
49

Timeline

About 1349-1351: Giovanni Boccaccio worked at his cycle of...

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About 1349-1351

Giovanni Boccaccio worked at his cycle of tales entitled (from the fact that the stories are told over the course of ten days) the Decameron. It was first translated into English in 1620.

1495: In a bonfire of the vanities in Florence,...

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1495

In a bonfire of the vanities in Florence, Italy, Girolamo Savonarola destroyed texts by Ovid , Dante , Boccaccio and others.

1677: Baruch or Benedictus de Spinoza's Ethics,...

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1677

Baruch or Benedictus de Spinoza 's Ethics, probably his most important text, was published shortly after his death at the age of forty-four.

January 1802: The Christian Observer was launched, as a...

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January 1802

The Christian Observer was launched, as a journalConducted by members of the established church with the aim of combating Methodism and other Dissenting sects as well as radicalism and scepticism.

April 1817: The first issue of Blackwood's Edinburgh...

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April 1817

The first issue of Blackwood's EdinburghMagazine appeared; founder William Blackwood intended to offer Tory competition to the liberal Edinburgh Review.

1826: The English Gypsy, or Roma, population was...

National or international item

1826

The English Gypsy, or Roma, population was grouped by authorities with all nomadic or vagrant peoples, who were estimated by William Cobbett to number around 30,000.

1828: The first issue of the successful annual...

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1828

The first issue of the successful annual gift bookThe Keepsake appeared; lavish production and distinguished contributors raised the price of this and other such publications to a guinea.

22 March 1832: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at Weimar...

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22 March 1832

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe died at Weimar in Germany in his early eighties.
Chisholm, Hugh, editor. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Cambridge University Press.

20 March 1839: The Anti-Corn Law League was founded....

National or international item

20 March 1839

The Anti-Corn Law League was founded.

1841: Ludwig Feuerbach published Das Wesen des...

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1841

Ludwig Feuerbach published Das Wesen des Christentums, an influential philosophical work demythologising Christianity.

1843: Charles Edward Mudie opened his first circulating...

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1843

Charles Edward Mudie opened his first circulating library .

March 1848: Chartist uprisings took place in London,...

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March 1848

Chartist uprisings took place in London, Glasgow, and Manchester.

1851: French medical researcher Charles-Edouard...

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1851

French medical researcher Charles-Edouard Brown-Séquard experimented with the effects of blood transfusion on the responsiveness of nerves in human corpses.

January 1852: Publisher John Chapman purchased the Westminster...

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January 1852

Publisher John Chapman purchased the Westminster and Foreign Quarterly and began issuing it as the Westminster Review (which, twenty-eight years and several mergers back, had been its original name).

July 1855: Alfred Tennyson published Maud and Other...

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July 1855

Alfred Tennyson published Maud and Other Poems.

Texts

Eliot, George. Adam Bede. W. Blackwood, 1859.
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. W. Blackwood, 1876.
Eliot, George. Daniel Deronda. Editor Cave, Terence, Penguin, 1995.
Eliot, George. “Editorial Materials”. Essays of George Eliot, edited by Thomas Pinney, Columbia University Press, 1963, p. various pages.
Eliot, George. Essays of George Eliot. Editor Pinney, Thomas, Columbia University Press, 1963.
Eliot, George. Felix Holt. W. Blackwood, 1866.
Eliot, George. Felix Holt. Editor Thomson, Fred C., Clarendon, 1980.
Eliot, George. Impressions of Theophrastus Such. W. Blackwood, 1879.
Eliot, George. Letter to Katharine S. Macquoid.
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. W. Blackwood, 1872.
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
Eliot, George. Middlemarch. Editor Carroll, David, Clarendon, 1986.
Eliot, George, and Felicia Bonaparte. Middlemarch. Editor Carroll, David, Oxford University Press, 1997.
Eliot, George. “Preface”. The George Eliot Letters, edited by Gordon S. Haight, Yale University Press, 1954, p. 1: ix - lxxvii.
Eliot, George. Romola. Smith, Elder, 1863.
Eliot, George. Romola. Editor Brown, Andrew, Clarendon, 1993.
Eliot, George. Scenes of Clerical Life. W. Blackwood, 1858.
Eliot, George. Scenes of Clerical Life. Editor Noble, Thomas A., Clarendon, 1985.
Eliot, George. Silas Marner. W. Blackwood, 1861.
Eliot, George. “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists”. Westminster Review, Vol.
66
, pp. 442-61.
Eliot, George. “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists”. A Victorian Art of Fiction, edited by John Charles Olmsted, Garland, 1979, pp. 277-98.
Feuerbach, Ludwig. The Essence of Christianity. Translator Eliot, George, J. Chapman, 1854.
Eliot, George. The George Eliot Letters. Editor Haight, Gordon S., Yale University Press, 1978.
Eliot, George. The Journals of George Eliot. Editors Harris, Margaret and Judith Johnston, Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Eliot, George. The Legend of Jubal. W. Blackwood, 1874.