George Eliot

George Eliot

1819–1880

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, an English novelist who adopted a male pseudonym to ensure her work was taken seriously. Her novels — particularly Middlemarch (1871–72) — are celebrated for their psychological depth, moral seriousness, and sympathy for ordinary lives. Virginia Woolf called Middlemarch "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people." Eliot was also a leading intellectual of Victorian England, working as a critic and translator before turning to fiction.

Works

Cover of Middlemarch

Middlemarch

A Study of Provincial Life

Set in a fictional English Midlands town in the 1830s, George Eliot's 1872 novel interweaves the stories of idealistic Dorothea Brooke, ambitious physician Lydgate, and a cast of finely drawn supporting characters. Virginia Woolf called it 'one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.'

 Cover of Silas Marner

Silas Marner

The Weaver of Raveloe

A miser weaver, unjustly exiled from his religious community, retreats into solitude and gold-hoarding — until a foundling child transforms him. George Eliot's 1861 fable of alienation and redemption, compressed and perfectly made.

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