George Eliot, 1819-1919

George Eliot, 1819-1919

A biography of Marian Evans, better known as George Eliot. As did lots of female authors of the time she opted for a male surname for publication purposes. She was a novelist and literary critic active in the mid to late 19th Century.

Evans lived a generous childhood, doing what she could to help the local impoverished where she grew up. This taught her lessons on humanity that would later appear in her works. As a young adult she learned French, German and Italian in addition to English and became a literary critic and translator. By 32 she was the assistant editor of the Westminster Review.

Evans married fellow critic George Henry Lewes and the two upheld the responsibility of benefitting as many as possible through their work. Eventually, Lewes inspired Evans to begin a career as a fiction novelist, and her first novel, Fortunes of Reverend Amos Barton, was a great success. Despite subsequent works sometimes underwhelming in comparison to her first, Evans succeeded in keeping a necessary variety within her works. A first novel as good as her's demands this of an author.

Evans did not write again once her husband passed away. She left behind a legacy of encapsulating social deficiencies, and creating inviting universes for the casual reader to ease into. Dialogue became one of Evans' strong suits, with one particular draft for a conversation driving Evans and Lewes to tears.

Evans did remarry years after Lewes' death; her second husband was attractive to Evans because of his history of love and loss, parallel to Evans'. She died eight months after their marriage. In a renowned biography of her written by the second husband, he says, "It was often in her mind and on her lips, that the only worthy end of all learning, of all science, of all life, in fact, is, that human beings should love each other better."

Edith Franklin Wyatt

archive.org

The North American Review

1 December 1919

English