Mary Ann Evans (pen name George Eliot  also known as Mary Ann Lewes or M A Lewes and Marian Cross).

Novelist, poet, journalist, translator.

22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880

Education

Local schools then boarding school until her mother’s death when she was 16. Learned French, German and Italian with a tutor and read widely.

Self-educated accessing the library at Arbury Hall (Arbury Hall Estate being managed by her father.)

1849 enrolled as a student at Ladies’ College to study Mathematics and Latin.

Some Key Achievements and Interests

Translated German works.

1851 Became Assistant Editor of Westminster Review to which she contributed.

1857 Published her first fiction in Blackwood’s Magazine using the pseudonym George Eliot.

1859 Adam Bede, her first novel, published with great success.

1860s Became one of the best paid authors of the day.

1861 Lived in Italy and studied Renaissance history and culture informing her historical novel Romola.

Published further novels to great acclaim as they showed such broad understanding of human life.

Issues

Mother died when she was 16 leaving her to take care of her father.

Introduced to radical thinkers of the time, she questioned her Christian faith, an action that brought her into conflict with her father. However, she continued to look after him until his death.

Became alienated from the brother, who she’d been close to in childhood, due to their different outlook on life and contemporary issues.

1850s Had difficulty earning enough to support herself living independently in London.

Lived with George Henry Lewes who was married but separated from his wife, their relationship causing a scandal and losing them friends. Some distanced themselves but she was also aware that she compromised them being seen in their presence.

Signed herself Marian or Mary Ann Lewes and talked of her husband challenging conventions.

On the one hand, she rebelled against society but, on the other, had a strong need to be accepted.

Further scandalised society only 18 months after Lewes’ death marrying John Walter Cross, a man 20 years her junior.

Connection to Bloomsbury

1850-1851 Studied at Ladies’ College.

1861 Registered to use the British Museum Reading Room – researched Romola here but she disliked working in the space. George Lewes accessed what she needed when possible or they went together.  

Female networks

Very extensive including: Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, Bessie Rayner Parkes, Caroline Bray, Elma (née Fraser) Stuart, Emily Davies, Frances Eleanor Trollope, Harriet Martineau, Hertha Ayrton, Maria Lewis (former teacher), Octavia Hill, Sarah Hennell.

Works include

1846 Translation of The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined by David Friedrich Strauss.

1854 Translation of The Essence of Christianity by Feuerbach, Ludwig.

1856 Translation of The Ethics of Benedict de Spinoza by de Spinoza, Benedict.

1856 Scenes of Clerical Life

1859 Adam Bede

1860 The Mill on the Floss

1861 Silas Marner

1863 Romola

1866 Felix Holt; the Radical

1867 Poem O May I Join the Choir Invisible published in The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems 1878  (the poem she is now most remembered for)

1872 Middlemarch

1876 Daniel Deronda

Further reading

George Eliot Archive – Home · George Eliot Archive

George Eliot – Wikipedia

See also: Mathilde Blinds biography of George Eliot for the Eminent Women Series ed by John H Ingram 1883

George Eliot : Mathilde Blind : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

The Choir Invisible

O May I join the choir invisible  
Of those immortal dead who live again  
In minds made better by their presence: live  
In pulses stirr’d to generosity,  
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self,  
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,  
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search  
To vaster issues.  
        So to live is heaven:  
To make undying music in the world,  
Breathing as beauteous order that controls  
With growing sway the growing life of man.  
So we inherit that sweet purity  
For which we struggled, fail’d, and agoniz’d 
With widening retrospect that bred despair.  
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,  
A vicious parent shaming still its child,  
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolv’d;  
Its discords, quench’d by meeting harmonies,  
Die in the large and charitable air.  
And all our rarer, better, truer self,  
That sobb’d religiously in yearning song,  
That watch’d to ease the burthen of the world,  
Laboriously tracing what must be,      
And what may yet be better,—saw within  
A worthier image for the sanctuary,  
And shap’d it forth before the multitude,  
Divinely human, raising worship so  
To higher reverence more mix’d with love,—    
That better self shall live till human Time  
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky  
Be gather’d like a scroll within the tomb Unread forever.  
        This is life to come,  
Which martyr’d men have made more glorious       
For us who strive to follow. May I reach  
That purest heaven, be to other souls  
The cup of strength in some great agony,  
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,  
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffus’d,  
And in diffusion ever more intense!  
So shall I join the choir invisible  
Whose music is the gladness of the world.