The Life of George Eliot: A Critical Biography

The life of the Victorian novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) is as dramatic as the plot of a novel: a brilliant but unattractive country girl moves to London, elopes with a married man and is ostracized by society until she begins writing novels under a male pseudonym and goes on to accumulate great wealth and fame. George Eliot’s dedication to realism renders the relationship between her life and her novels especially intriguing. Incorporating the very latest research in the field of George Eliot studies, this biography re–examines the story of her life, cross–referencing its fascinating narrative with analysis of her fiction and poetry. In doing so, the author reveals how Eliot’s life provides insight into her art as well as how her art can enhance our understanding of her life. Informed by cutting–edge academic research, and including critical interpretations of her work from multiple theoretical perspectives, this new Life of George Eliot is a critical biography for the twenty–first century.

List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi List of Abbreviations xiii 1 The History of a Writer: George Eliot and Biographies 1 2 Early Years: 1819–50 22 3 London and Lewes: 1850–4 64 4 Marian Lewes and George Eliot: 1855–60 95 5 Silas Marner and Romola: 1860–4 120 6 Felix Holt and The Spanish Gypsy: 1865–9 153 7 Middlemarch: 1870–2 181 8 Daniel Deronda: 1873–6 207 9 Impressions of Theophrastus Such: 1877–9 235 10 The Final Years: 1879 to Cross’s Life 255 Bibliography 271 Index 287

Nancy Henry is Professor of English at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. She is the author of George Eliot and the British Empire (2002), the Cambridge Introduction to George Eliot (2008), and co–editor of Victorian Investments: New Perspectives on Finance and Culture (2009).

“…this learned, adventurous new biographer has changed the landscape of George Eliot studies.”   (The George Eliot Review, 1 November 2012) “Clean prose and relatively minimal endnotes make the book accessible to undergraduates.  Summing Up:  Recommended.  Upper–division undergraduates through faculty.”  ( Choice , 1 October 2012) “Henry provides a useful reminder that that old–fashioned pejorative, adulteress, might have been applied to Eliot as well as to Agnes, and she provides a sensitive analysis of the novels in the light of that insight.”  ( The New Yorker , 6 August 2012) “Driven neither by hero–worship or spite, Henry′s "critical biography" demonstrates what treasure there is still to be found in even the most worked–over subjects. The trick is to ask the questions that everyone else assumed had been answered years ago.”  ( The Guardian , 2 June 2012) “Such insights fill this book, which shows penetrating intelligence from first to last.  Nancy Henry has managed, seamlessly but always with needed distinctions, to unite, in exacting interrelation and with edges sharp, George Eliot’s lived experience and imaginative experience.”  ( George Eliot–G.H. Lewes Studies , 1 September 2012)