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George Eliot - Biography & Works

Fiction

Daniel Deronda

Silas Marner

The Mill on the Floss





George EliotGeorge Eliot was the pseudonym used by Mary Ann Evans. Eliot was born in Warwickshire, England in 1819. She was a Victorian writer of perceptive psychological novels.

After her father’s death in 1841, she traveled throughout Europe and settled in London. She began to work as sub editor at “Westminster Review’s. In 1954, George Eliot translated Feuerbach's “Essence of Christianity” from German. This is the only book that bears her real name: Mary Ann Evans.

George Eliot became the centre of a literary circle. There she met George Henry Lewes. Eliot went with Lewes to Germany in 1854. Later she wrote “The Mill on the Floss” which is a reflection over her relationship and common law marriage with Lewes. Eliot was first encouraged to write fiction by Lewes.

“Scenes of Clerical Life”, was Eliot’s first collection of stories published in 1858. She wrote under the pseudonym of George Eliot because at the time writing was considered to be a man’s not a woman’s profession. Later she published her first novel, “Adam Bede” that became a great success. The model for the main character in this story was Eliot’s father. Other major works of Eliot included: "The Mill on The Floss" and “Silas Marner”. The novel that became known as her best was “Middlemarch”. The novel was about English provincial life in the early nineteenth century. Between 1860-1861 she spent time in Italy to collect material for “Romola”. The story was first published in the “Cornhill Magazine”.

When George Henry Lewes died, she married John Cross an American banker. George Eliot died the same year of a kidney ailment on December 22, 1880. In her works throughout her life George Eliot explored the moral problems and inner struggles of people. George Eliot’s writing was philosophical and revealed a lot about human nature.




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