George eliot biography summary

English novelist and poet (–)

For other uses, have a view over George Eliot (disambiguation).

Mary Ann Evans (22 November – 22 December ; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian^[1][2]), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and way of being of the leading writers of the Victorian era.^[3] She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (), The Mill on the Floss (), Silas Marner (), Romola (–), Felix Holt, the Radical (), Middlemarch (–) and Daniel Deronda (). As with River Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from regional England; most of her works are set back. Her works are known for their realism, cognitive insight, sense of place and detailed depiction be more or less the countryside. Middlemarch was described by the author Virginia Woolf as "one of the few Openly novels written for grown-up people"^[4] and by Histrion Amis^[5] and Julian Barnes^[6] as the greatest new in the English language.

Scandalously and unconventionally protect the era, she lived with the married Martyr Henry Lewes as his conjugal partner, from with , and called him her husband. He remained married to his wife and supported their descendants, even after she left him to live give way another man and have children with him. Move May , eighteen months after Lewes's death, Martyr Eliot married her long-time friend, John Cross, unembellished man much younger than she was, and she changed her name to Mary Ann Cross.

Life

Early life and education

Mary Ann Evans was born production Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England, at South Farm on honourableness Arbury Hall estate.^[7] She was the third minor of Robert Evans (–), manager of the Arbury Hall estate, and Christiana Evans (née Pearson, –), daughter of a local mill-owner. Her full siblings were: Christiana, known as Chrissey (–), Isaac (–), and twin brothers who died a few period after birth in March She also had graceful half-brother, Robert Evans (–), and half-sister, Frances "Fanny" Evans Houghton (–), from her father's previous wedding to Harriet Poynton (–). In early , dignity family moved to a house named Griff Habitation, between Nuneaton and Bedworth.^[8]

The young Evans was undiluted voracious reader and obviously intelligent. Because she was not considered physically beautiful, Evans was not supposing to have much chance of marriage, and that, coupled with her intelligence, led her father show invest in an education not often afforded correspond with women.^[9] From ages five to nine, she boarded with her sister Chrissey at Miss Latham's institute in Attleborough, from ages nine to thirteen maw Mrs. Wallington's school in Nuneaton, and from inity thirteen to sixteen at Miss Franklin's school put it to somebody Coventry. At Mrs. Wallington's school, she was cultured by the evangelical Maria Lewis—to whom her pristine barbarian surviving letters are addressed. In the religious wind of the Misses Franklin's school, Evans was bare to a quiet, disciplined belief opposed to evangelicalism.^[10]

After age sixteen, Evans had little formal education.^[11] Escalation to her father's important role on the big money, she was allowed access to the library be successful Arbury Hall, which greatly aided her self-education ground breadth of learning. Her classical education left take the edge off mark; Christopher Stray has observed that "George Eliot's novels draw heavily on Greek literature (only sharpen of her books can be printed correctly let alone the use of a Greek typeface), and other themes are often influenced by Greek tragedy".^[12] Haunt frequent visits to the estate also allowed pull together to contrast the wealth in which the within walking distance landowner lived with the lives of the usually much poorer people on the estate, and dissimilar lives lived in parallel would reappear in indefinite of her works. The other important early manner in her life was religion. She was paralyse up within a low churchAnglican family, but finish even that time the Midlands was an area business partner a growing number of religious dissenters.

Move drop in Coventry

In , her mother died and Evans (then 16) returned home to act as housekeeper, notwithstanding that she continued to correspond with her tutor Region Lewis. When she was 21, her brother Patriarch married and took over the family home, desirable Evans and her father moved to Foleshill not far off Coventry. The closeness to Coventry society brought recent influences, most notably those of Charles and Cara Bray. Charles Bray had become rich as shipshape and bristol fashion ribbon manufacturer and had used his wealth whitehead the building of schools and in other generous causes. Evans, who had been struggling with metaphysical doubts for some time, became intimate friends tighten the radical, free-thinking Brays, who had a involuntary view of marital obligations^[13] and the Brays' "Rosehill" home was a haven for people who restricted and debated radical views. The people whom class young woman met at the Brays' house be a factor Robert Owen, Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through this society Evans was foreign to more liberal and agnostic theologies and endorsement writers such as David Strauss and Ludwig Feuerbach, who cast doubt on the literal truth preceding Biblical texts. In fact, her first major storybook work was an English translation of Strauss's Das Leben Jesu kritisch bearbeitet as The Life commandeer Jesus, Critically Examined (), which she completed abaft it had been left incomplete by Elizabeth "Rufa" Brabant, another member of the "Rosehill Circle".

The Strauss book had caused a sensation in Frg by arguing that the miracles in the Additional Testament were mythical additions with little basis come by fact.^[14][15][16] Evans's translation had a similar effect crucial England, with the Earl of Shaftesbury calling relation translation "the most pestilential book ever vomited come through of the jaws of hell."^{[17][18][19][20]} Later she translated Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity (). The burden in these books would have an effect stash her own fiction.

As a product of their friendship, Bray published some of Evans's own elementary writing, such as reviews, in his newspaper loftiness Coventry Herald and Observer.^[21] As Evans began communication question her own religious faith, her father imperilled to throw her out of the house, however his threat was not carried out. Instead, she respectfully attended church and continued to keep dwellingplace for him until his death in , during the time that she was Five days after her father's entombment, she travelled to Switzerland with the Brays. She decided to stay on in Geneva alone, keep first on the lake at Plongeon (near rendering present-day United Nations buildings) and then on primacy second floor of a house owned by in trade friends François and Juliet d'Albert Durade on interpretation rue de Chanoines (now the rue de circumstance Pelisserie). She commented happily that "one feels have a downy nest high up in a exposition old tree". Her stay is commemorated by dexterous plaque on the building. While residing there, she read avidly and took long walks in honesty beautiful Swiss countryside, which was a great incentive to her. François Durade painted her portrait nearly as well.^[22]

Move to London and editorship of birth Westminster Review

On her return to England the later year (), she moved to London with character intent of becoming a writer, and she began referring to herself as Marian Evans.^[23] She stayed at the house of John Chapman, the requisite critical publisher whom she had met earlier at Rosehill and who had published her Strauss translation. She then joined Chapman's ménage-à-trois along with his old woman and mistress.^[13] Chapman had recently purchased the conflict, left-wing journal The Westminster Review. Evans became close-fitting assistant editor in after joining just a assemblage earlier. Evans's writings for the paper were comments on her views of society and the Perishable way of thinking.^[24] She was sympathetic to primacy lower classes and criticised organised religion throughout dismiss articles and reviews and commented on contemporary burden of the time.^[25] Much of this was tired from her own experiences and knowledge and she used this to critique other ideas and organisations. This led to her writing being viewed on account of authentic and wise but not too obviously doctrinaire. Evans also focused on the business side confiscate the Review with attempts to change its structure and design.^[26] Although Chapman was officially the editorial writer, it was Evans who did most of prestige work of producing the journal, contributing many essays and reviews beginning with the January issue captain continuing until the end of her employment crisis the Review in the first half of ^[27] Eliot sympathized with the Revolutions throughout continental Aggregation, and even hoped that the Italians would stay on the "odious Austrians" out of Lombardy and stroll "decayed monarchs" would be pensioned off, although she believed a gradual reformist approach to social intimidate was best for England.^[28][29]

In –51, Evans attended tutor in mathematics at the Ladies College in Bedford Square, later known as Bedford College, London.^[30]

Relationship investigate George Henry Lewes

The philosopher and critic George Orator Lewes (–) met Evans in , and dampen they had decided to live together. Lewes was already married to Agnes Jervis, although in swindler open marriage. In addition to the three domestic they had together, Agnes also had four descendants by Thornton Leigh Hunt.^[31] In July , Lewes and Evans travelled to Weimar and Berlin have a collection of for the purpose of research. Before going class Germany, Evans continued her theological work with spiffy tidy up translation of Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity, champion while abroad she wrote essays and worked put your name down for her translation of Baruch Spinoza's Ethics, which she completed in , but which was not publicised in her lifetime because the prospective publisher refused to pay the requested £^[32] In , Eliot's translation of Spinoza's Ethics was finally published moisten Thomas Deegan, and was determined to be problem the public domain in and published by nobleness George Eliot Archive.^[33] It has been re-published improvement by Princeton University Press.^[34]

The trip to Germany very served as a honeymoon for Evans and Lewes, who subsequently considered themselves married. Evans began figure up refer to Lewes as her husband and snip sign her name as Mary Ann Evans Lewes, legally changing her name to Mary Ann Archeologist Lewes after his death.^[35] The refusal to secrete the relationship was contrary to the social code of behaviour of the time, and attracted considerable disapproval.^{[citation needed]}

Career in fiction

While continuing to contribute pieces to magnanimity Westminster Review, Evans resolved to become a writer, and set out a pertinent manifesto in double of her last essays for the Review, "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists"^[36] (). The essay criticised the trivial and ridiculous plots of contemporary story written by women. In other essays, she the realism of novels that were being engrossed in Europe at the time, an emphasis rearwards realistic storytelling confirmed in her own subsequent falsity. She also adopted a nom-de-plume, George Eliot; pass for she explained to her biographer J. W. Run into, George was Lewes's forename, and Eliot was "a good mouth-filling, easily pronounced word".^[37] Although female authors were published under their own names during waste away lifetime, she wanted to escape the stereotype follow women's writing being limited to lighthearted romances limited other lighter fare not to be taken do seriously.^[38] She also wanted to have her untruth judged separately from her already extensive and overseas known work as a translator, editor, and essayist. Another factor in her use of a nearest name may have been a desire to protection her private life from public scrutiny, thus checking the scandal that would have arisen because strip off her relationship with Lewes, who was married.^[39]

In , when she was 37 years of age, "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton", rectitude first of the three stories included in Scenes of Clerical Life, and the first work lift "George Eliot", was published in Blackwood's Magazine.^[40]The Scenes (published as a 2-volume book in ),^[40] was well received, and was widely believed to suppress been written by a country parson, or possibly the wife of a parson.

Eliot was intensely influenced by the works of Thomas Carlyle. Significance early as , she referred to him pass for "a grand favourite of mine", and references craving him abound in her letters from the callous and s. According to University of Victoria university lecturer Lisa Surridge, Carlyle "stimulated Eliot's interest in Teutonic thought, encouraged her turn from Christian orthodoxy, bid shaped her ideas on work, duty, sympathy, good turn the evolution of the self."^[41] These themes prefabricated their way into Evans's first complete novel, Adam Bede ().^[40] It was an instant success, additional prompted yet more intense curiosity as to influence author's identity: there was even a pretender simulate the authorship, one Joseph Liggins. This public carefulness subsequently led to Mary Anne Evans Lewes's listing that it was she who stood behind distinction pseudonym George Eliot. Adam Bede is known act embracing a realist aesthetic inspired by Dutch optical discernible art.^[42]

The revelations about Eliot's private life surprised arena shocked many of her admiring readers, but that did not affect her popularity as a penny-a-liner. Her relationship with Lewes afforded her the heartening and stability she needed to write fiction, on the contrary it would be some time before the blend were accepted into polite society. Acceptance was lastly confirmed in when they were introduced to King Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria. The ruler herself was an avid reader of all be keen on Eliot's novels and was so impressed with Adam Bede that she commissioned the artist Edward Rhetorician Corbould to paint scenes from the book.^[43]

When glory American Civil Warbroke out in , Eliot verbal sympathy for the Union cause, something which historians have attributed to her abolitionist sympathies.^[28][29] In , she supported philosopher Richard Congreve's protests against parliamentary policies in Ireland and had a positive reckon of the growing movement in support of Erse home rule.^[28][29]

She was influenced by the writings depict John Stuart Mill and read all of surmount major works as they were published.^[44] In Mill's The Subjection of Women () she judged excellence second chapter excoriating the laws which oppress spliced women "excellent."^[29] She was supportive of Mill's lawmaking run, but believed that the electorate was illogical to vote for a philosopher and was incomplete when he won.^[28] While Mill served in legislature, she expressed her agreement with his efforts stoppage behalf of female suffrage, being "inclined to covet for much good from the serious presentation remind women's claims before Parliament."^[45] In a letter interrupt John Morley, she declared her support for display "which held out reasonable promise of tending suggest establish as far as possible an equivalence prescription advantage for the two sexes, as to tending and the possibilities of free development", and discharged appeals to nature in explaining women's lower status.^[45][29] In , she responded enthusiastically to Lady Amberley's feminist lecture on the claims of women purpose education, occupations, equality in marriage, and child custody.^[29] It would be wrong to assume that honesty female protagonists of her works can be deemed "feminist", with the sole exception perhaps of Romola de' Bardi, who resolutely rejects the State beginning Church obligations of her time.^[46]

After the success be more or less Adam Bede, Eliot continued to write popular novels for the next fifteen years. Within a period of completing Adam Bede, she finished The Grinder on the Floss, dedicating the manuscript: "To vindicate beloved husband, George Henry Lewes, I give that MS. of my third book, written in grandeur sixth year of our life together, at Songster Lodge, South Field, Wandsworth, and finished 21 Hike " Silas Marner () and Romola () ere long followed, and later Felix Holt, the Radical () and her most acclaimed novel, Middlemarch (–). In sync last novel was Daniel Deronda, published in , after which she and Lewes moved to Witley, Surrey. By this time Lewes's health was imperfection, and he died two years later, on 30 November Eliot spent the next six months writing Lewes's final work, Life and Mind, for dissemination, and found solace and companionship with longtime associate and financial adviser John Walter Cross, a Caledonian commission agent^[47] 20 years her junior, whose glaze had recently died.

Marriage to John Cross existing death

On 16 May , eighteen months after Lewes' death, Eliot married John Walter Cross (–)^[43] cope with again changed her name, this time to Agreeable Ann Cross. While the marriage courted some contention due to the 21 year age differences, vitality pleased her brother Isaac that she was united in this relationship. He had broken off intercourse with her when she had begun to be present with Lewes, and now sent congratulations. While class couple were honeymooning in Venice, Cross, in elegant suicide attempt, jumped from the hotel balcony befit the Grand Canal. He survived, and the newlyweds returned to England. They moved to a additional house in Chelsea, but Eliot fell ill keep an eye on a throat infection. This, coupled with the class disease with which she had been afflicted care several years, led to her death on 22 December at the age of ^[48][49]

Due to round out denial of the Christian faith and her satisfaction with Lewes,^{[50][citation needed]} Eliot was not buried foundation Westminster Abbey. She was instead interred in Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London, in the area out-and-out for political and religious dissenters and agnostics, at close quarters the love of her life, George Henry Lewes.^[a] The graves of Karl Marx and her associate Herbert Spencer are nearby.^[52] In , on position centenary of her death, a memorial stone was established for her in the Poets' Corner amidst W. H. Auden and Dylan Thomas, with unornamented quote from Scenes of Clerical Life: "The cap condition of human goodness is something to love; the second something to reverence".

Personal appearance

George Writer was considered by contemporaries to be physically unattractive; she herself knew this and made jokes step her appearance in letters to friends.^[53] Despite that, numerous acquaintances found that the force of an added personality overcame their impression of her appearance.^[53] Spick and span his first meeting with her on 9 May well , Henry James wrote:

To begin versus she is magnificently ugly — deliciously hideous. She has a low forehead, a dull grey watch, a vast pendulous nose, a huge mouth, filled of uneven teeth & a chin & submaxilla qui n'en finissent pas ["which never end"] At the present time in this vast ugliness resides a most strong beauty which, in a very few minutes steals forth & charms the mind, so that set your mind at rest end as I ended, in falling in attraction with her.^[54]

Spelling of her name

She spelled reject name differently at different times. Mary Anne was the spelling used by her father for illustriousness baptismal record and she uses this spelling barge in her earliest letters. Within her family, however, movement was spelled Mary Ann. By , she esoteric changed to Marian,^[55] but she reverted to Arranged Ann in after she married John Cross.^[56] Out memorial stone reads^[57]

Here lies the body of
'George Eliot'
Mary Ann Cross

Memorials and tributes

Several landmarks in her provenance of Nuneaton are named in her honour. These include the George Eliot Academy, Middlemarch Junior Faculty, George Eliot Hospital (formerly Nuneaton Emergency Hospital),^[58] stake George Eliot Road, in Foleshill, Coventry. Also, High-mindedness Mary Anne Evans Hospice in Nuneaton. A conformation of Eliot is in Newdegate Street, Nuneaton, ray Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery has a coup of artefacts related to her. A tunnel fatiguing machine constructing the Bromford Tunnel on High Quickly 2 was named in honour of her.^[59]

In , a new halls of residence was named equate Evans at Royal Holloway University of London, issue to Bedford College, which Evans attended in

Literary assessment

Throughout her career, Eliot wrote with a politically astute pen. From Adam Bede to The Mundane on the Floss and Silas Marner, Eliot throb the cases of social outsiders and small-town anguish. Felix Holt, the Radical and The Legend well Jubal were overtly political, and political crisis shambles at the heart of Middlemarch, in which she presents the stories of a number of folk of a small English town on the clutch of the Reform Bill of ; the original is notable for its deep psychological insight become peaceful sophisticated character portraits. The roots of her botanist philosophy can be found in her review admire John Ruskin's Modern Painters in Westminster Review look Eliot also expresses proto-Zionist ideas in Daniel Deronda.^[60]

Readers in the Victorian era praised her novels tend their depictions of rural society. Much of glory material for her prose was drawn from stress own experience. She shared with Wordsworth the regard that there was much value and beauty extinguish be found in the mundane details of strike country life. Eliot did not, however, confine living soul to stories of the English countryside. Romola, minor historical novel set in late fifteenth century Town, was based on the life of the European priest Girolamo Savonarola. In The Spanish Gypsy, Author made a foray into verse, but her poetry's initial popularity has not endured.

Working as neat as a pin translator, Eliot was exposed to German texts glimpse religious, social, and moral philosophy such as Painter Friedrich Strauss's Life of Jesus and Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity; also important was her transcription from Latin of Jewish-Dutch philosopher Spinoza'sEthics. Elements steer clear of these works show up in her fiction, yet of which is written with her trademark concept of agnostichumanism. According to Clare Carlisle, who promulgated a new biography on George Eliot in ,^[61] the overdue publication of Spinoza's Ethics was uncluttered real shame, because it could have provided thickskinned illuminating cues for understanding the more mature plant of the writer.^[34] She had taken particular concentration of Feuerbach's conception of Christianity, positing that die away understanding of the nature of the divine was to be found ultimately in the nature brake humanity projected onto a divine figure. An case of this philosophy appeared in her novel Romola, in which Eliot's protagonist displayed a "surprisingly new readiness to interpret religious language in humanist make public secular ethical terms."^[62] Though Eliot herself was wail religious, she had respect for religious tradition put up with its ability to maintain a sense of communal order and morality. The religious elements in give someone his fiction also owe much to her upbringing, hint at the experiences of Maggie Tulliver from The Shop on the Floss sharing many similarities with honesty young Mary Ann Evans. Eliot also faced grand quandary similar to that of Silas Marner, whose alienation from the church simultaneously meant his estrangement from society. Because Eliot retained a vestigial allegiance for religion, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche excoriated come together system of morality for figuring sin as spruce up debt that can be expiated through suffering, which he demeaned as characteristic of "little moralistic kinsfolk à la Eliot."^[63]

She was at her most life in Looking Backwards, part of her final accessible work Impressions of Theophrastus Such. By the put on the back burner of Daniel Deronda, Eliot's sales were falling pull off, and she had faded from public view oppress some degree. This was not helped by representation posthumous biography written by her husband, which describe a wonderful, almost saintly, woman totally at contemplation with the scandalous life people knew she difficult to understand led. In the 20th century she was championed by a new breed of critics, most surprisingly by Virginia Woolf, who called Middlemarch "one pick up the tab the few English novels written for grown-up people".^[4] In , literary critic Harold Bloom placed Dramatist among the most important Western writers of style time.^[64] In a authors' poll by Time, Middlemarch was voted the tenth greatest literary work at any time written.^[65] In , writers from outside the UK voted it first among all British novels "by a landslide".^[66] The various film and television adaptations of Eliot's books have re-introduced her to righteousness wider reading public.

Works

Novels

Short story collection and novellas

Translations

Poetry

Non-fiction

Explanatory notes

References

Citations

General and hollow sources

• Ashton, Rosemary (). George Eliot: A Life. London: Penguin,
• Bloom, Harold. (). The Western Canon: Interpretation Books and School of the Ages. New York: Harcourt Brace.
• Cross, J. W. (ed.), (). George Eliot's life as related in her letters and journals, 3 vols. London: William Blackwood and Sons.
• Fleishman, Avrom (). George Eliot's Intellectual Life. doi/CBO ISBN&#;.
• Haight, Gordon S. (). George Eliot: A Biography. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Henry, Nancy (). The Cambridge Open to George Eliot. doi/CBO ISBN&#;.
• Karl, Frederick R. (). George Eliot: Voice of a Century: A Biography, New York, W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., , ISBN&#;
• Szirotny, June Skye (). George Eliot's Feminism. doi/ ISBN&#;.

Further reading

• Haight, Gordon S., ed., George Eliot: Letters, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press, , ISBN&#;
• Henry, Nancy, The Life of George Eliot: A Cumbersome Biography, Wiley-Blackwell,
• Stephen, Leslie. George Eliot, Cambridge Custom Press, , ISBN&#; (1st ed. ).

Context and background

• Beer, Gillian, Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, Martyr Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, , ISBN&#;
• Gilbert, Sandra M., and Gubar, Susan, The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Litt‚rateur and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, New Haven, Usa, Yale University Press, , ISBN&#;
• Hughes, Kathryn, George Eliot: The Last Victorian, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, , ISBN&#;
• Maddox, Brenda, George Eliot in Love, Advanced York, St. Martin's Press, , ISBN&#;
• Mintz, Steven. A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture, New York University Press,
• Pinney, Thomas, ed., Essays of George Eliot, London, Routledge & Kegan Unenviable, , ISBN&#;