Book Description
The works assembled here introduce George Eliot’s incisive views on religion, art, and science, and the nature and purpose of fiction. Essays show her rejecting her earlier religious beliefs, questioning conventional ideas about female virtues and marriage, and setting out theories of idealism and realism that she developed further in her famous novels. Also included are selections from Eliot’s translations of works by Strauss and Feuerbach, excerpts from her poems, and reviews of writers such as Wollstonecraft, Goethe, and Browning. Wonderfully rich in imagery and observations, these pieces reveal the intellectual development of this most rewarding of writers. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume of specially commissioned essays provides accessible introductions to all aspects of George Eliot's writing by some of the most distinguished new and established scholars and critics of Victorian literature. The essays are comprehensive, scholarly and lucidly written, and at the same time offer original insights into the work of one of the most important Victorian novelists, and into her complex and often scandalous career. With its supplementary material, including a chronology and a guide to further reading, this Companion is an invaluable tool for scholars and students alike. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume makes available for the first time the entire surviving journals and diaries of the great Victorian novelist, George Eliot, and constitutes a new text by her--the closest she came to autobiography. The journals span her life from 1854, when she entered into a common-law union with George Henry Lewes, to her death in 1880, revealing the professional writer George Eliot as well as the remarkable private woman, Marian Evans. The edition includes a chronology, introduction, headnotes to each diary, and an annotated index supplying valuable contextual and explanatory information. ... Read more

Amazon.com
From Gordon Haight's scrupulous 1968 work George Eliot through Ruby Redinger's 1976 feminist rethinking George Eliot: The Emergent Self and beyond, the unconventional life and probing fiction of Victorian England's loftiest female author has attracted the scrutiny of numerous biographers. British scholar Kathryn Hughes's pungent account distinguishes itself by limning Mary Ann Evans's turbulent emotions with as much acuity as she does the creative drive that eventually led one of London's most prominent editors and critics to reinvent herself as the novelist George Eliot. Cast out of respectable public life when she moved in with the married George Henry Lewes, Eliot found personal happiness with a man who understood her need for all-consuming love and artistic salvation. Lewes demonstrated his dedication to her by screening Eliot from outside criticism and inner doubts that could have prevented her from writing. Hughes's analysis of their relationship is as sympathetic yet candid as the rest of her narrative. She paints a vivid portrait of Victorian intellectual life and Eliot's provocative role within it as a writer who questioned conventional wisdom of all sorts, but whose heroines ultimately chose lives of modest usefulness within the existing society. As her biographer puts it in a typically well turned phrase, "Eliot's novels show people how they can deal with the pain of being a Victorian by remaining one." --Wendy Smith Book Description
A major new biography of a great english writer who has particular relevance for our own age.

For the sheer breadth of experience embodied in her life and work, George Eliot presents an ever alluring subject for biographers. The daughter of one of the new breed of self-made businessmen, she had a scandalous liaison with the married writer and editor George Henry Lewes that made an outcast of her until literary fame overcame "polite" scruples. Unparalleled among the great English novelists for her understanding of the important intellectual and political debates of her day, she nonetheless maintained a fervent attachment to the pragmatic middle ground, where idealism is tempered by love, habit, and history. It is no wonder that many a previous biographer has foundered in the face of so much richness and complexity, producing lopsided or not entirely coherent portraits of the writer.

Kathryn Hughes's sympathetic, human, and immensely readable biography provides a truly nuanced view of Eliot, and is the first to grapple equally with the personal dramas that shaped her psyche-particularly her rejection by her brother Isaac-and her social and intellectual context. Hughes shows how these elements together forged the themes of Eliot's work, her insistence that ideological interests be subordinated to the bonds between human beings-a message that has keen resonance in our own uneasy time. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Thanks, Kathryn
I have started to read a lot of biographies, and somehow most of the authors manage to extinguish my passionate interest in the lives of the greats by a tedious writing style.Kathryn Hughes' book George Eliot: The Last Victorian is innocent of such charges. In fact, the book is both eruditely scholarly and reads like an exciting novel. I hope Kathryn Hughes writes more biographies.

the basic essentials you need to know on Eliot are in this book
Whata complex person was George Eliot (1819-1880). Mary Ann
was born in the English midlands in a rural, conservative and
evangelical society. She became an agnostic, free thinker whose
brilliant early works were translations of German scholarship dealing with a critical examination of the life of Jesus.
Eliot had a succesion of love affairs which such literary types as John Chapman editor of the Westminster Review and the
brillian but cold Herbert Spencer. Her true love was George
Henry Lewes a literary man who never divorced his unfaithful wife Agnes continuing to support her and his children through the long years he spent living with Eliot.
With the encouragement, nurturing care and support of Lewes the fragile, tempermental, moody and gloomy plain girl from the Midlands became the leading light in the intellectual-literary world of mid 19th century London.
Eliot is in the first rank of Victorian novelists. Her classics include "Adam Bede"; "The Mill on the Floss"; "Silas
Marner"; "Felix Holt the Radical': "The Spanish Gypsy"; "Romola"
"Middlemarch" and "Daniel Deronda.:
Eliot was a brilliant woman who all of her life was concerned about her plain appearance. She married young John Cross in 1880
dying only eight months into the marriage.
Hughes gives a plainly written account of Mary Ann's life from the provincial girl to the grand old lady of English letters.
Her life was sad since her brother Isaac and family refused to accept her arrangement of living with a married man. She was
scorned as a fallen woman by polite society but found a modicum of happiness with Lewes.
Huges provides short adequate summaries of all the novels and poems by Eliot. Some readers may find the infighting among family members and literary people in London tedious.
Hughes had done her homework producing a solid biography.

Fine basic biography on the life of this essential writer
Though the book was overall a bit biased toward Eliot's needy side, and didn't include quite enough literary criticism for my taste, I still found this a great and very informative read, especially for those with not a lot of background on the subject of this major Victorian writer.

Workmanlike Bio
Hughes' life of Eliot is solid, comprehensive, and given its dazzling subject, remarkably tedious. The book provides an ample chronicle of Eliot's documented life without ever bringing Marian Evans or her marvelous writings to life.

Hughes is much better at piling on the details of Victorian intellectual life than working her way inside the creative processes that created Middlemarch, Adam Bede, and Daniel Deronda. The first half of the book, covering Evans' family life and difficult early adulthood, reads well, the impressive accumulation of research making up for lack of narrative.

But when Evans creates Eliot and the first of her fictions, the book should snap to life. It instead deflates, dutifully cranking out novel synopses and recounting scandals without ever getting at why Eliot's fiction was so beloved in her day, and remains so today.

A novelist of uncanny power and tremendous influence, Eliot deserves a biography at the level of Peter Ackroyd's spectacular life of Dickens. We're still waiting...

Scrutinizes the Victorian society that Mary Evans lived in
George Eliot: The Last Victorian is an intimate biography of noted author Mary Ann Evans, who is perhaps better known by the pen name of George Eliot (1819-1880). Some of Ms. Evans' most famous works include the novels Silas Marner, Middlemarch, and Adam Bede. This informative biography focuses quite closely on Evans' life, including her friendships with Dickens and Trollope, and the controversial scandal of her relationship to a married writer George Henry Lewes. Biographer Kathryn Hughes also scrutinizes the Victorian society that Mary Evans lived in and wrote so much about. Even Queen Victoria enjoyed books by George Eliot, but you don't need royal blood to enjoy this intriguing and meticulously presented biography. ... Read more

Book Description
In this innovative study Nancy Henry introduces new facts that place George Eliot's life and work within the contexts of mid-nineteenth-century British colonialism and imperialism. She examines Eliot's roles as an investor in colonial stocks, a parent to emigrant sons, and a reader of colonial literature. She highlights the importance of these contexts to our understanding of Eliot's fiction and her position within Victorian culture. The book also reexamines the assumptions of postcolonial criticism about Victorian fiction and its relation to empire.Download Description
In this innovative study Nancy Henry introduces a new set of facts that place George Eliot's life and work within the contexts of mid nineteenth-century British colonialism and imperialism. Henry examines Eliot's roles as an investor in colonial stocks, a parent to emigrant sons, and a reader of colonial literature. She highlights the importance of these contexts to our understanding of both Eliot's fiction and her situation within Victorian culture. Henry argues that Eliot's decision to represent the empire only as it infiltrated the imaginations and domestic lives of her characters illuminates the nature of her Realism. The book also re-examines the assumptions of postcolonial criticism about Victorian fiction and its relation to empire. ... Read more

Book Description

Amazon.com
Frederick Karl's magisterial biography of George Eliot proves her to be one of the most fascinating and iconic individuals of her time. Karl, author of commanding biographies of Conrad, Faulkner, and Kafka, meticulously brings Eliot to life. He re-creates her world, London society, and intellectual thought, as well as the world of the gifted or fortunate. He shows how Eliot transformed herself, taking new names as her self developed and grew. With his discussion of Eliot's life, Karl portrays what life was was like for a woman during that time and identifies important women's issues.

Eliot, torn between her desire to conserve the past and her urge to change the limitations imposed by class and gender, proves to be a fascinating individual beckoning towards our twentieth-century sense of the modern. Karl's is an unforgettable portrait of a writer whose profound works are recognized today as literary masterpieces. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The Study of an Amazing Intellect
George Eliot, born Mary Ann Evens, author of arguably the greatest novel in the Victorian era, Middlemarch, was not just an author but an intellectual giant. She translated works of philosophy from the German and from Latin; knew and exchanged ideas with the brightest minds of the time; was fluent in 7 languages (French, Italian, German, Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Spanish), and was compelled by a natural curiosityto acquire knowledge all through her life.

Her life with a married man created a Victorian scandal, yet by the time of her death in 1880 she was Englandýs most celebrated author visited even by Queen Victoriaýs daughters.

This biography is a thorough, accessible and engrossing book. Author Karl is a fan of Eliotýs yet hides none of her blemishes. While he generally refuses to speculate on a lot of Victorian gossip regarding her life, he at times annoys the reader with some unwarranted attempts to psychoanalyze her (I do get tired of the injection of Freud into literature). The slowest parts of the book deal with her frequenttrips to Europe. We learn what she did on Tuesday in Berlin, and then her activities in Hamburg on Wednesday. While I realize that the recording of such information is important in providing a fairly complete detail ofher life, I tend to nod a bit at the lengthy reports of her travels.

Historically we are blessed with a huge number of extant correspondence of Eliot. The author makes good use of these letters, yet the book does not turn into an epistolary work i.e. a book of nothing but verbatim letters.

One of my purely personal problems with the book was that I have not read all of Eliotýs novels. Mr. Karl, of necessity perhaps, relates much of the plots of her books, and thus creates a real spoiler for the novels that I havenýt read. Thatýs my problem, of course, and not the authorýs.

It would seem that people today are probably unaware of this important author who was known throughout England during her writing lifetime. Her novels and her life are an important part of the literary canon. I heartily recommend this well crafted book

The Study of an Amazing Intellect
George Eliot, born Mary Ann Evens, author of arguably the greatest novel in the Victorian era, Middlemarch, was not just an author but an intellectual giant. She translated works of philosophy from the German and from Latin; knew and exchanged ideas with the brightest minds of the time; was fluent in 7 languages (French, Italian, German, Latin, Hebrew, Greek and Spanish), and was compelled by a natural curiosityto acquire knowledge all through her life.

Her life with a married man created a Victorian scandal, yet by the time of her death in 1880 she was England's most celebrated author visited even by Queen Victoria's daughters.

This biography is a thorough, accessible and engrossing book. Author Karl is a fan of Eliot's yet hides none of her blemishes. While he generally refuses to speculate on a lot of Victorian gossip regarding her life, he at times annoys the reader with some unwarranted attempts to psychoanalyze her (I do get tired of the injection of Freud into literature). The slowest parts of the book deal with her frequenttrips to Europe. We learn what she did on Tuesday in Berlin, and then her activities in Hamburg on Wednesday. While I realize that the recording of such information is important in providing a fairly complete detail ofher life, I tend to nod a bit at the lengthy reports of her travels.

Historically we are blessed with a huge number of extant correspondence of Eliot. The author makes good use of these letters, yet the book does not turn into an epistolary work i.e. a book of nothing but verbatim letters.

One of my purely personal problems with the book was that I have not read all of Eliot's novels. Mr. Karl, of necessity perhaps, relates much of the plots of her books, and thus creates a real spoiler for the novels that I haven't read. That's my problem, of course, and not the author's.

It would seem that people today are probably unaware of this important author who was known throughout England during her writing lifetime. Her novels and her life are an important part of the literary canon. I heartily recommend this well crafted book ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Beautiful and moving
this book is, simply put, wonderful. you will love the good guys and detest the bad, but most of all want to praise ms. elliot for her touching masterpiece ... Read more

Book Description
George Eliot's notebooks from the years 1872-77 reveal her acquisition of a wide range of learning about Judaism, and provide insight into the creative process of integrating that learning into her last novel, Daniel Deronda. One of the notebooks is published here for the first time; others are offered in new transcriptions. Translations are provided for the notes in German, French, Italian, Greek and Hebrew; explanatory headnotes are supplied, and interpretative links are made to the novel; primary sources are traced and the chronology of Eliot's reading outlined. ... Read more