George Eliot Biography

George Eliot.
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George Eliot [Mary Ann Evans]  (1819-1880), English Novelist and Short-Story Writer.

George Eliot, novelist and short-story writer, was the pen name of Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans. She is best known for her novels Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner and Middlemarch. Her reputation as one of the greatest English novelists continues to this day.

Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880), who wrote under the pseudonym George Eliot, was born on November 22, 1819, in Arbury Farm in Warwickshire in the Midlands. That was the time of great changes when the country was changing very rapidly in infrastructures and technology, new industrial age of steam engines, locomotives, railroads and factories.

In 1854, she went with the writer George Henry Lewes to Germany.  He was already married and could not get a divorce but she lived with him in London until his death for more than twenty years.  She used the pen name George Eliot because in those days writing was considered to be a male profession.

Her novels are about ordinary people living their ordinary lives.    Two Eliot quotes for reflection:

“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”

“It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive.
There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good,
and we must hunger after them.”

Related article you may want to check out  — George Eliot Biography

Works by George Eliot

• Scenes of Clerical Life, 1858
• Adam Bede, 1859
• The Mill on the Floss, 1860
• Silas Marner, 1861
• Romola, 1863
• Felix Holt, the Radical, 1866
• The Spanish Gypsy, 1868, poetry
• Middlemarch, 1871-72
• Daniel Deronda, 1876

Note:  Originally posted March 20, 2009.   Updated Nov 22, 2011.