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George Eliot (1819-80)
Who?
Much admired by Henry James and Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev, Eliot is one of the greatest novelists in the English language.
Must reads
Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876).
Darkest hour
The death of her lover GH Lewes in 1878 was a blow that ended her writing career.
Greatest triumph
In 1851, she became assistant editor of the radical magazine The Westminster Review. Eight years later, the publication of Adam Bede was received with enormous enthusiasm and put her on the map. In 1919, Virginia Woolf said that Middlemarch was 'one of the few English novels written for grown-up people'.
Essential quotes
'Nothing is so good as it seems before hand.' (Silas Marner)
'A Study of Provincial Life.' (Subtitle of Middlemarch)
Gossip
She never married writer and intellectual GH Lewes because he already had a wife. But they lived together for more than 20 years. Barely two years after Lewes' death, she married John Walter Cross, her financial adviser, and 20 years her junior. She died seven months later.
Did u know?
Her real name was Mary Ann, later given as Marian, Evans.
What to say
The greatest serious novelist of the 19th century, her work is characterised by domestic realism, pathos and humour. Her best novels range with great imaginative power from subtle psychological analysis to accounts of the great movements of European ideas.
Don't say
By George, she's got it!
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