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Born Mary Ann Evans in 1819, George Eliot was the daughter of a land agent who managed
estates in the rural midlands, a formative experience that gave her an insight into
country
society that later greatly influenced and enriched her first works of fiction. At
different
times of her life, she also spelled her name as Mary Anne, Marian, and Marianne, adopting
the pen-name of Eliot only after her first work of fiction was published in 1857. |
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Eliot was brought up in a narrow religious tradition, and at school she became a convert
to
Evangelicalism. Charles Bray, a free thinking manufacturer, influenced her skepticism
of
orthodox beliefs, although she never strayed from the ethical teachings of her childhood
religion. Her works contain themes of love and duty, and affectionate portraits of
clergymen
and dissenters. She began her literary career with translations from the German of
two works
of religious speculation, of which Strauss’s Life of Jesus was published in 1846 without her name. |
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In 1849, after the death of her father, she moved to London and quickly became involved
in
literary circles. In 1851, John Chapman made her the assistant editor of the Westminster Review although she had been contributing articles and
reviews to the periodical for only a year. It was through Chapman’s influence that
she met
G. H. Lewes, who was then separated from his wife. She began living with him without
a legal
union in 1854, an arrangement that caused her some anxiety and strife with friends
and
family, but one that ultimately proved both long lasting and beneficial to her literary
career. Only after meeting him did she begin writing works of fiction, and Lewes remained
a
strong supporter of her work until his death in 1878. |
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"The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," one of three stories
brought together in Scenes of Clerical Life (1858), appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1857 under the name of George Eliot, the
first work that bore this pseudonym. These stories were praised for domestic realism,
pathos, and humor, and caused speculation about the identity of George Eliot, who
many
believed was a clergyman or a clergyman’s wife. Scenes marked the beginning as well of a long relationship with
Blackwood Press, which would publish all of her works save Romola. |
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Begun in 1858, Adam Bede (1859) established her as a leading
English novelist, praised by readers as diverse as James H. Turgenev and Queen Victoria.
Following Bede were a series of novels, including The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862-3), Felix Holt, (1866), Middlemarch (1871-2), and Daniel Deronda (1876). Until Romola, a historical novel about society in Florence, Italy, her
novels had concerned country life. In the eighteen first-person character studies
in
Impressions of Theophrastrus Such (1879), Eliot’s last
published work and perhaps most experimental, a contemporary fictional scholar examines
both himself and
the people around him. |
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In 1880, she married John Walter Cross, her financial advisor and
friend who was twenty years younger than she. Eliot died seven months later. |
