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George Eliot

1819–1880
English novelist George Eliot (1819 - 1880)
English novelist George Eliot (1819 - 1880) (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

George Eliot is widely recognized as one of the most important writers of the nineteenth century; yet her two volumes of poetry are often ignored in modern critical assessments. Like so many of her contemporaries, Eliot tried to make significant literary contributions in more than one genre; her poems—both narrative and lyric—deal, however, with some of the same themes which inform her novels and short stories. Her poems are less accomplished than her prose fiction—only one poem, “O May I Join the Choir Invisible,” has achieved any lasting fame—but they do stand as an informative window on to her life as a writer.

George Eliot was born Mary Ann Evans in rural Warwickshire and was unusually well educated for a woman of her time. Her first publication, a poem published in the Christian Observer in January 1840, “'Knowing That Shortly I Must Put Off This Tabernacle,'“ displays the influence of Eliot’s Evangelical teachers.  In 1841, Eliot came in contact with a group of philosophical thinkers, and her passionate commitment to Christianity began to find new directions. By early 1842 Eliot questioned the historical foundations of Christianity so much that she both abandoned her faith and stopped attending church services, a move that led to strenuous conflict with her father. Eliot eventually resumed church attendance but did not return to active faith. In forty-three lines of blank verse, Eliot claims in “O May I Join the Choir Invisible” that the only afterlife one can have comes from participation in the growing group of men and women who make the world a better place to live—better in human terms, individually and collectively. The piece demonstrates Eliot’s unconventional thinking in a highly orthodox Christian society.

At the encouragement of London publisher John Chapman, Eliot published a review for the Westminster Review and, excited by her entrée to the London literary world, decided to try to earn her living by writing. In 1851, Eliot became assistant editor of the Westminster Review. During her time with the journal, she met many English and American literary figures—most significantly, Herbert Spencer, the author of Social Statics (1851), and George Henry Lewes, the drama critic and founder of the Leader. The subsequent union of Lewes and Eliot was complicated by Lewes’ thirteen-year marriage to Agnes Jervis, who, over time, bore four children by a married friend.

A controversial figure during her time, Eliot published translations as well as prose and poetry, all but one under her adopted pseudonym. Among her themes are music; art as an activity of unfathomable human worth; the notion that the past shapes the present; and the conflict in a woman's life between great duty and the prospect of a happy marriage. Her prose masterpiece was the psychologically insightful Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (1871).

Poems by George Eliot
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Bibliography

  • Scenes of Clerical Life (2 volumes, Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1858; 1 volume, New York: Harper, 1858).
  • Adam Bede (3 volumes, Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1859; 1 volume, New York: Harper, 1859).
  • The Mill on the Floss (3 volumes, Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1860; 1 volume, New York: Harper, 1860).
  • Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1861; New York: Harper, 1861).
  • Romola (3 volumes, London: Smith, Elder, 1863; 1 volume, New York: Harper, 1863).
  • Felix Holt, The Radical (3 volumes, Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1866; 1 volume, New York: Harper, 1866).
  • The Spanish Gypsy: A Poem (Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1868; Boston: Ticknor
    & Fields, 1868).
  • How Lisa Loved the King (Boston: Fields, Osgood, 1869).
  • Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (8 parts, Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1871-1872; 2 volumes, New York: Harper, 1872-1873).
  • The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems (Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1874; Boston: Osgood, 1874).
  • Daniel Deronda (8 parts, Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1876; 2 volumes, New York: Harper, 1876).
  • Impressions of Theophrastus Such (Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1879; New York: Harper, 1879).
  • Essays and Leaves from a Note-Book, edited by C. L. Lewes (Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1884; New York: Harper, 1884).
  • Quarry for Middlemarch, edited by Anna T. Kitchel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950).
  • Essays of George Eliot, edited by Thomas Pinney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963; London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963).
  • Some George Eliot Notebooks: An Edition of the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library's George Eliot Holograph Notebooks, Mss. 707, 708, 709, 710, 711 [the Daniel Deronda notebooks], edited by William Baker (Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, 1976).
  • George Eliot's Middlemarch Notebooks: A Transcription, edited by John Clark Pratt and Victor A. Neufeldt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
  • A Writer's Notebook, 1854-1879, and Uncollected Writings, edited by Joseph Wiesenfarth (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1981).

Collection

  • The Works of George Eliot, Cabinet Edition, 24 volumes (Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1878-1885).

Translations

  • David Friedrich Strauss, The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined, translated from the fourth German edition, 3 volumes (London: Chapman, 1846).
  • Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, translated as Marian Evans from the second German edition, Chapman's Quarterly Series, no. 6 (London: Chapman, 1854).

Selected Periodical Publications

  • "'Knowing That Shortly I Must Put Off This Tabernacle,'" Christian Observer (January 1840): 38.
  • "Scenes of Clerical Life," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 81-82 (January-November 1857): 1-22, 153-172, 319-334, 416-434, 521-539, 685-702; 55-76, 189-206, 329-344, 457-473, 519-541.
  • "The Lifted Veil," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 86 (July 1859): 24-28.
  • "Romola," Cornhill Magazine, 6-8 (July 1862-August 1863): 1-43, 145-186, 289-318, 433-470, 577-604, 721-757; 1-30, 145-171, 281-309, 417-440, 553-576, 681-705; 1-34, 129-153.
  • "Brother Jacob," Cornhill Magazine, 10 (July 1864): 1-32.
  • "Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 103 (January 1868): 1-11.
  • "How Lisa Loved the King," Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 105 (May 1869): 513-528.
  • "Agatha," Atlantic Monthly, 24 (August 1869): 199-207.
  • "The Legend of Jubal," Macmillan's Magazine, 22 (May 1870): 1-18; Atlantic Monthly, 25 (May 1870): 589-604.
  • "Armgart," Macmillan's Magazine, 24 (July 1871): 161-187.
  • "A College Breakfast Party," Macmillan's Magazine, 38 (July 1878): 161-179.

Letters

  • John W. Cross, ed., George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals, 3 volumes (Edinburgh & London: Blackwood, 1885).
  • Gordon S. Haight, ed., The George Eliot Letters, 9 volumes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954-1955; 1978).

The major collection of George Eliot's manuscripts is at the British Library. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, has an important collection of letters. Other collections are at the New York Public Library, the Pforzheimer, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Princeton University Library.