George Eliot
Author of Middlemarch · Novelist · 1819–1880
The Victorian novelist behind the pen name George Eliot, whose 'Middlemarch' and other novels rendered provincial life with unmatched psychological depth and moral seriousness.
Who was Eliot?
Mary Ann Evans, who wrote as George Eliot, was born in Warwickshire and was formidably learned: she translated German critics of religion, lost her Christian faith while keeping its moral seriousness, and edited a leading review before turning to fiction. She took a man's name so her novels would be judged as serious art, not 'silly novels by lady novelists'. In 'Adam Bede', 'The Mill on the Floss', 'Silas Marner', 'Middlemarch' and 'Daniel Deronda' she rendered provincial English life with unmatched psychological depth and moral sympathy — 'Middlemarch', her masterpiece, weaves a whole community's ambitions and disappointments, above all Dorothea Brooke's thwarted longing to do good. She lived, unmarried and scandalously, with the writer George Henry Lewes, and built her ethics on human sympathy rather than divine command.
Major achievements
- Wrote 'Middlemarch', often called the greatest English novel
- Wrote 'The Mill on the Floss', 'Silas Marner' and 'Adam Bede'
- Pioneered a psychological realism of extraordinary depth and sympathy
- Translated influential German works of biblical criticism and philosophy
- Won serious acclaim in an age hostile to women novelists
Life in brief
- 1819 — Born in Warwickshire: As Mary Ann Evans.
- 1846 — Translates Strauss: Renders 'The Life of Jesus', shaping her freethinking.
- 1851 — Edits the Westminster Review: A leading intellectual journal.
- 1859 — Adam Bede: Her first novel, under the name George Eliot.
- 1860 — The Mill on the Floss: Her semi-autobiographical novel.
- 1872 — Middlemarch: Her masterpiece of provincial life.
- 1880 — Dies: In London.
Explore the life of Eliot — five chapters
- The Estate Agent's Daughter — Warwickshire, an evangelical girlhood, and a refusal to go to church
- London, and Mr Lewes — Editing a review, and choosing social ruin
- Choosing a Man's Name — Scenes of Clerical Life, and an impostor who forced her out
- Middlemarch — A study of provincial life, and of what happens to unused ability
- Marriage at Sixty, and a Grave Outside the Abbey — Isaac writes back
Read the five-chapter life of George Eliot →
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