George Eliot

English novelist of the Victorian era, known for realism and psychological insight.

She wrote seven novels including Middlemarch, which was described by Virginia Woolf as "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people"^[1] The Victorian-era writer Mary Ann Evans, who published under the name George Eliot, produced novels, poetry, journalism, and translations.^[2] Realism, psychological depth, and careful portrayals of rural settings characterize Eliot's fiction.^[1]

Last updated 2026-09-30 from the source article.

Quick Facts

Birth name

Mary Ann Evans

Born

22 November 1819

Birthplace

Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England

Died

22 December 1880

Place of death

Chelsea, London, England

Resting place

Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London

Occupation

Novelist
poet
journalist
translator

Spouse

John Cross (1880)

Facts from the source article.

Life and work

From ages five to sixteen, she attended three different schools, where she was taught by the evangelical Maria Lewis and exposed to a disciplined religious atmosphere.^[3][4] In 1836, her mother died and Evans returned home to act as housekeeper.^[5] She moved to London in 1850, became assistant editor of The Westminster Review in 1851, and contributed essays and reviews.^[6][7][8] Her first work of fiction, "The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton", was published in 1857.^[9]

After Lewes's death in 1878, she married John Walter Cross in 1880, and died on 22 December 1880 at age sixty-one.^[10][11][12] Once she turned sixteen, Evans's formal schooling ended, but her father's position allowed her to use the Arbury Hall library, which significantly supported her independent studies.^[13] In 1851, George Henry Lewes first encountered Evans; three years later, they resolved to cohabit, even though Lewes remained married to Agnes Jervis.^[14]

What the cited sources add

The same source states that critic J. Hillis Miller argued Eliot's novels are typically structured around failures of sympathy.^[15] The Victorian Web account of Eliot's funeral states that mourners included the sculptor Thomas Woolner, publisher George Smith, and scientist T. H. Huxley.^[16] The same source notes that Oscar Browning, who attended the funeral, later wrote a biography of Eliot.^[16]

References

Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Woolf, Virginia. "George Eliot." The Common Reader. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1925. pp. 166–176.; Long, Camilla.Martin Amis and the sex war, The Times, 24 January 2010, p. 4: "They've [women] produced the greatest writer in the English language ever, George ; Guppy, "Interviews: Julian Barnes, The Art of Fiction No. 165", The Paris Review (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Ashton, "George Eliot: A Life", Hamish Hamilton, 1996, p. 255; Jacobs, "George Eliot's Scandalous Answer to 'The Marriage Question'", The New York Times, 13 August 2023; "George Eliot (…) is the most earnestly imperative and the most probingly intelligent of the great mid-Victorian novelists". In: Sanders, Andrew The Short Oxfor (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. Norton, 1995. pp. 24–25 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. Norton, 1995. p. 31 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Los Angeles Review of Books", Los Angeles Review of Books, 6 August 2017 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Eliot, The George Eliot Letters, Ed. Gordon S. Haight, Vol. I, New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Press (RE: First known instance of George Eliot signing her name as ′Marian Evans′), 4 April 1851 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Mackenzie, "A Dialogue of Forms: The Display of Thinking in George Eliot's 'Poetry and Prose, From the Notebook of an Eccentric' and Impressions of Theophrastus Such", Prose Studies, 2014, p. 117–129; Bodenheimer, "Review of Before George Eliot: Marian Evans and the Periodical Press; Modernizing George Eliot: The Writer as Artist, Intellectual, Proto-Modernist, Cultural Critic, by Fionnuala Dillane & K. M. Newton", Vi (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Dillane, "Before George Eliot: Marian Evans and the Periodical Press", Cambridge University Press, 2013; Ashton, Rosemary. George Eliot: A Life. London: Penguin, 1997. 88ff. [110].; Fleishman, "George Eliot's Intellectual Life", Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 140–142; Szirotny, "George Eliot's Feminism: The Right to Rebellion", Springer, 2015, p. 26–28 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: ; (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: 1881 census (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Rosemary Ashton, "Evans, Marian [George Eliot] (1819–1880)", (Later Works) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "George Eliot", BBC History, 15 October 2009; "Eminent Persons: Biographies reprinted from the Times", Macmillan and Co., 1893, p. 232–239 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Karl, Frederick R. George Eliot: Voice of a Century. Norton, 1995. p. 52 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
Wikipedia, "George Eliot" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Henry, "The Cambridge Introduction to George Eliot", Cambridge, 2008, p. 6 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
"Los Angeles Review of Books", Los Angeles Review of Books, 6 August 2017. facts only, no text reused. lareviewofbooks.org
Banerjee, "George Eliot's grave: Highgate Cemetery, London", The Victorian Web, 29 July 2017. facts only, no text reused. victorianweb.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article George Eliot (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.