Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
George Eliot
-
Standard Name: Eliot, George
Birth Name: Mary Anne Evans
Nickname: Polly
Nickname: Pollian
Self-constructed Name: Mary Ann Evans
Self-constructed Name: Marian Evans
Self-constructed Name: Marian Evans Lewes
Pseudonym: George Eliot
Pseudonym: Felix Holt
Married Name: Mary Anne Cross
GE
, one of the major novelists of the nineteenth century and a leading practitioner of fictional realism, was a professional woman of letters who also worked as an editor and journalist, and left a substantial body of essays, reviews, translations on controversial topics, and poetry.
"George Eliot" by Universal Images Group/Contributor,Retrieved from https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/george-eliot-pen-name-of-mary-ann-evans-important-british-news-photo/113634333.
In July that year her friendship with George Eliot
had been cemented and her opinion of G. H. Lewes
radically improved by a seaside visit to this unconventional couple at Tenby in Wales. (By...
Friends, Associates
Jane Ellen Harrison
Distinguished guests at Newnham
at this time included Ruskin
and Turgenev
; JEH
recalls giving them tours of the college in her Reminiscences of a Student's Life.
Harrison, Jane Ellen. Reminiscences of a Student’s Life. Hogarth Press, 1925.
44
A great admirer of George Eliot
Friends, Associates
Harriet Martineau
Marian Evans
, later George Eliot, visited HM
at her home in Ambleside.
Martineau, Harriet. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. Selected Letters, edited by Valerie Sanders, Clarendon Press, 1990, pp. vii - xxxiii, 235.
xxiii
Friends, Associates
Constance Naden
CN
was a friend of the two poets who shared the name Michael Field
(who also came from Birmingham) and of the medical doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson
(who presumably did not hold against her the...
Friends, Associates
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
In May 1869 George Eliot
recorded in her diary Bodichon's steady friendship at the time when G. H. Lewes
's son Thornie
was dying of tuberculosis of the spine. Bodichon visited twice a week and...
Friends, Associates
Frances Eleanor Trollope
In addition to her supportive professional relationship with her husband, FET
was also close to other writers such as Charles Dickens
, her brother-in-law Anthony Trollope
, her mother-in-law Frances Trollope
, and George Eliot
Friends, Associates
Anne Thackeray Ritchie
ATR
lived with the Stephens
after their marriage, and while there became a friend of such literary figures as George Meredith
, Henry James
(who described her after an early encounter as exquisitely irrational)...
Friends, Associates
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
Marks (later Ayrton) was the daughter of impoverished Jewish Polish immigrants and was a brilliant mathematician. BLSB
interviewed her for a Girton scholarship, and subsequently became deeply involved with her life and family. Marks spent...
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Of Eliot he wrote: this gifted woman was...
Friends, Associates
Florence Nightingale
Around this time FN
became acquainted with other literary women as well. In July 1852 George Eliot
, who had become her correspondent, remarked in another letter that there is a loftiness of mind about...
Friends, Associates
Julia Wedgwood
This friendship was cemented during visits to Linlathen in Forfarshire, the home of Thomas Erskine
, who was himself a major spiritual influence on JW
. Her letters to Gurney mention meetings with Darwin
Friends, Associates
Bessie Rayner Parkes
BRP
knew personally and corresponded with many of the Victorian intelligentsia. In addition to her Langham Place associates already mentioned, her literary friends and acquaintances included Matilda Hays
, Harriet Martineau
, Anthony Trollope
,...
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Longman Companion to Victorian Fiction. Longman, 1988.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Friends, Associates
Matilda Betham-Edwards
MBE
set a great deal of store by meeting men distinguished as authors or in other fields, as a spur to literary achievement of her own. She was given to boasting of her acquaintance with...
Friends, Associates
Linda Villari
LV
and her husband were both friends of Vernon Lee
, accepting her hospitality and moving in the same circles.
Gunn, Peter. Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856-1935. Oxford University Press, 1964.
96
Lee corresponded with LV
from the late 1870s to the early 1880s and discussed...
