{\b George Eliot (Pseudonym of Mary Ann, later Marian, Evans)}.

{\b Date of Birth}.:  22 November 1819 

{\b Date of Death}.: 22 December 1880

{\b Works}.

English novelist. 
Her works include Middlemarch (1871-2),  Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the 
Floss (1860) and Silas Marner (1861). Her first fictional writing was a series 
of short stories in Blackwood's Magazine entitled Scenes from Clerical Life 
(1857). She also wrote various poems and published two major translations. 
George Eliot has been described as one of the first modern English novelists: 
she challenged the early Victorian concept that the novel was primarily 
entertainment and developed psychological analysis.

{\b Featured Works}.

'Middlemarch', 'Silas Marner', 'Mill on the Floss', 'Felix Holt', 'Adam Bede', 
'From "The Spanish Gypsy"'.

{\b General Comment}.

George Eliot was the daughter of Robert Evans, the agent for a Warwickshire 
estate. As a girl she enjoyed a very close relationship with her brother, 
which she draws on in the opening scenes of childhood in The Mill on the 
Floss. At school she converted to Evangelicalism and although she later 
rejected this belief religious motivations remained important in both her life 
and her work, which reflects the belief that life is a means of testing the 
morals of the individual. Eliot continued her studies at home and in 1846 
published an anonymous translation of Strauss's Life of Jesus. 
In 1850 Eliot met John Chapman, the owner and editor of the Westminster Review 
and began writing for the journal, rising to assistant editor.  During this 
period she met many of the key literary figures of the time, and lived as a 
paying guest of Mr and Mrs Chapman, a situation brought to an end because of 
her growing emotional attachment to her employer.

 Eliot subsequently met and fell in love with George H. Lewes who was to be a 
constant support to her in her literary career, which became firmly 
established after the publication of Adam Bede in 1859. Unfortunately Lewes 
was already married and could not obtain a divorce.  Nevertheless, the couple 
lived together, a situation which caused Eliot much concern and although it 
was eventually accepted by her friends it left her estranged from her family. 
This rift was healed only after she married her financial adviser, John Walter 
Cross, after Lewes' death.