Scenes of Clerical Life

George Eliot was born Mary Anne Evans in Chilvers Coton, England in 1819 on an estate managed by her father. When her mother did she left school to run the household, continuing her education alone in the estate’s library. She was multi-lingual and steeped in classical literature by the time a series of her essays and translations led to an invitation to London to edit the prestigious Westminster Review—anonymously, for fear a female editor would put off readers. When nearly 40 she published the story collection Scenes of Clerical Life, under the pseudonym George Eliot, partly because she was living with a married man, radical publisher George Henry Lewes, and feared being shunned by the public. Bu tin 1849 her fist novel Adam Bede, with its startling realism and psychologically astute characterizations, caused a sensation—and prompted an imposter to claim authorship. Evans revealed herself and was indeed ostracized, although less so with each successful new book, from The Mill on the Floss to Silas Marner and Middlemarch. After 25 years together Lewes died and, still grieving, she married their banker, a man 20 years her junior. She died shortly thereafter in 1880.