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.
Biographer Keith Alexander McKenzie
considers this to be the only one of EJS
's works that retains the power to interest readers, partly because of the style, partly because of the sensitive and often striking...
Material Conditions of Writing
Edith J. Simcox
EJS
began work on what was then titled Vignettes in March 1880, shortly before George Eliot
's marriage to John Walter Cross
, and she found solace in writing them: I think of her without...
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...
Textual Production
Edith J. Simcox
At the urgings of her publisher, Nikolaus Trübner
, EJS
began translating German idealist philosopher Eduard von Hartmann
's Philosophy of the Unconscious. She abandoned her plans upon discovering that her publication would not...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Edith J. Simcox
In connection with writing a review of Middlemarch for The Academy, EJS
met George Eliot
.
McKenzie, Keith Alexander, and Gordon S. Haight. Edith Simcox and George Eliot. Oxford University Press.
84
Haight, Gordon S., and Keith Alexander McKenzie. “Introduction”. Edith Simcox and George Eliot, Oxford University Press, p. xi - xviii.
xiii
Literary responses
Edith J. Simcox
As noted by Laurie Zierer
in Broomfield
and Mitchell
's anthology of Victorian women writers, EJS
's connection with George Eliot
has saved her from permanent obscurity, [but] her stature as a Victorian writer and...
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
Publishing
Edith J. Simcox
EJS
reviewed George Eliot
's Middlemarch for The Academy, again using her pseudonym H. Lawrenny.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
190
McKenzie, Keith Alexander, and Gordon S. Haight. Edith Simcox and George Eliot. Oxford University Press.
84
Textual Production
Evelyn Sharp
Sharp was an eager reader of Atalanta. She took full advantage of the service it offered of assessing essays on literary figures submitted for its competitions, sending in, among others, an essay on George Eliot
Literary responses
Caroline Scott
This was one of the white neck-cloth
Eliot, George. “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists”. A Victorian Art of Fiction, edited by John Charles Olmsted, Garland, pp. 277-98.
293
or Evangelical sub-species of fiction which George Eliot
distinguished in her notorious attack on the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic
Eliot, George. “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists”. A Victorian Art of Fiction, edited by John Charles Olmsted, Garland, pp. 277-98.
279
in Silly Novels...
Reception
Sir Walter Scott
Blackwood contrasted Scott's stormy relations with his publishers, with his own personal friendships with his authors, among them George Eliot
.
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 Setting
Olive Schreiner
Cherry Clayton
believes the novel's fictional English setting, Greenwood, was influenced by the English landscapes in the works of Hardy
, George Eliot
, and the BrontësEmily BrontëAnne Brontë
. Schreiner herself had not yet been to...
Author summary
George Sand
French writer George Sand
(Aurore Dudevant) wrote over one hundred novels and plays. Her correspondence fills twenty-five volumes. She averaged two novels a year after 1831. British writers including Elizabeth Barrett Browning
and George Eliot
