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.
"George Eliot" by Universal Images Group/Contributor,1754-01-02.Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/george-eliot-pen-name-of-mary-ann-evans-important-british-news-photo/113634333.This image is licensed under the GETTY IMAGES CONTENT LICENCE AGREEMENT.
She was, however, always reading as a child: she and her sister had few books, but knew by heart whole chapters of the ones they did have. As a child Susan hated Mrs Mortimer
's...
Education
Emily Jane Pfeiffer
Her family's financial troubles prevented EJP
from receiving a formal or thorough education. In her own words, education was not within the reach of the gently born who were also poor, therefore I had little...
Education
Margaret Atwood
She attended elementary school, and then from 1952 Leaside High School
in Toronto, both in the Protestant public school system operating in Ontario alongside a Catholic one. She and her schoolmates got prayers and...
Education
Frances Power Cobbe
Her continuing studies, particularly of theology, benefitted from access to Archbishop Marsh's Library
in Dublin (though it was ostensibly open only to gentlemen and graduates). Her reading at this period may have included Marian Evans, later George Eliot
Although FMM
's father was, for the most part, more concerned with her fragile health than her academic development, the twin sisters received some home-schooling from their mother to quite a high level, since she...
Education
Alison Uttley
Alice Jane Taylor (later AU
) was a strong-willed child who set her own agenda. She later remembered a trial of wills, at the age of two, with her godmother, which ended not in her...
Education
Beryl Bainbridge
BB
described her reading at nine years old as a mixture: George Eliot
and children's writers like Richmal Crompton
and Susan Coolidge (Sarah Woolsey
): Just William, What Katy Did, The Mill...
Education
Mary Gawthorpe
Like all her siblings but one, MG
had been taught to read before she went to the local Church of England
infants' school, St Michael's, at the age of five.
Gawthorpe, Mary. Up Hill to Holloway. Traversity Press, 1962.
19
The whole family had...
Education
Louisa Baldwin
Following her marriage, she studied German, French, and Italian, as well as the works of Shakespeare
and the novels of George Eliot
.
Taylor, Ina. Victorian Sisters. Adler and Adler, 1987.
114-15, 127
Education
Charlotte Mew
CM
later attended lectures at University College, London
, and read widely in English and French. She particularly admired George Eliot
.
Mew, Charlotte. “Introduction”. Collected Poems and Prose, edited by Val Warner, Carcanet and Virago, 1981, p. ix - xxii.
ix
Education
Jessie Fothergill
She acquired much knowledge through her voracious consumption of books: I loved books, and read all that I could get hold of, and have had many a rebuke for poring over those books instead of...
Education
Alice Meynell
In the summer of 1852 Elizabeth and Alice Thompson (later AM
) began their education under their father's instruction. Recording her daughters' lessons, Christiana Thompson writes, Dear little angels do their writing . ....
Timeline
By December 1855
George Meredith
published his first work of fiction, The Shaving of Shagpat: An Arabian Entertainment.
A petitionfor Reform of the Married Women's Property Law, organized by the Married Women's Property Committee
and signed by many prominent women, was presented to both Houses of Parliament.
By 2 August 1856
Jane Margaret Strickland
published a novel, Adonijah, a tale of the Jewish Dispersion; it was shortly attacked by George Eliot
in Silly Novels by Lady Novelists as one of the deplorable types of fiction...
1858
Rachel Felix
, the celebrated tragic actress, died of pulmonary consumption.
February 1858
Bessie Rayner Parkes
described to George Eliot
, in a letter, the limited company established by the Langham Place group to support The English Woman's Journal.
1861
A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued what seems to be the earliest version of a game called Authors, whose object was to collect sets of cards bearing the names of writers and the...
By 25 October 1862
Victor Hugo
completed the publication in successive parts of his novelLes Misérables.
The first issue appeared of George Smith
's innovative evening newspaper, The Pall Mall Gazette.
1871-1872
A civil trial against the Tichborne estate trustees was brought to court and was eventually lost by the Tichborne Claimant who alleged that he was heir to the Tichborne estate in Hampshire.
January 1873
Jane Elizabeth Senior
was appointed as a (temporary) government inspector of pauper schools and workhouses: the first woman to hold this office.
July 1875
Hercegovina (at this date part of Bosnia), rebelled against rule by Turkey; in 1876 Bulgaria, Serbia, and Montenegro also rose.
