George Eliot
22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880
George Eliot (1819-1880), the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, was an English novelist, poet, and translator, one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, including Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Middlemarch, are celebrated for their realism and psychological insight.
Lived at the same time
Well-documented people whose lives overlapped with George Eliot.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) Overlapped 61 years →
- Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) Overlapped 61 years →
- Clara Schumann (1819–1896) Overlapped 61 years →
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Overlapped 61 years →
- Emir Abdelkader (1808–1883) Overlapped 61 years →
- Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) Overlapped 61 years →
Life events
Mary Ann Evans was born at South Farm on the Arbury Hall estate in Warwickshire, where her father was an estate manager.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgEvans moved with her father to Coventry, where friendship with the freethinkers Charles and Cara Bray led her to question her evangelical faith.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgEvans published her English translation of David Strauss's controversial Das Leben Jesu, her first major intellectual work.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAfter moving to London, Evans became the de facto editor of the radical quarterly Westminster Review, an unusual position for a woman at the time.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgEvans began living openly with the married critic George Henry Lewes, a scandalous union at the time that lasted until his death in 1878.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgAdam Bede, published under the pen name George Eliot, was an instant success and prompted intense speculation about the author's identity.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgEliot's semi-autobiographical novel The Mill on the Floss, drawing on her Warwickshire childhood, confirmed her standing among Victorian novelists.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgMiddlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life appeared in installments and is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels in the English language.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgEighteen months after Lewes's death, Eliot married John Cross, a banker twenty years her junior, in London.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgGeorge Eliot died at her home in Chelsea, London, of kidney disease combined with a throat infection, and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.
Source: en.wikipedia.org