george eliot

English - English

Definition of george eliot in English English dictionary: an British woman writer, whose real name was Mary Ann or Marian Evans. She wrote some of the greatest English novels, including Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner. Her novels give a detailed picture of many different characters at all levels of English society (1819-80). orig. Mary Ann Evans later Marian Evans born Nov. 22, 1819, Chilvers Coton, Warwickshire, Eng. died Dec. 22, 1880, London British novelist. Eliot was raised with a strong evangelical piety but broke with religious orthodoxy in her 20s. She worked as a translator, a critic, and a subeditor of the Westminster Review (1851-54). Later she turned to fiction. Adopting a masculine pseudonym to evade prejudice against women novelists, she first brought out Scenes of Clerical Life (1858). This was followed by such classic works as Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862-63), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), and Daniel Deronda (1876). Her masterpiece, Middlemarch (1871-72), provides a thorough study of every class of provincial society. The method of psychological analysis she developed would become characteristic of modern fiction. With the journalist, philosopher, and critic George Henry Lewes (1817-78), a married man, she enjoyed a long and happy, though scandalous, liaison; their Sunday-afternoon salons were a brilliant feature of Victorian life; {i} pen name of Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880, British writer, author of "Silas Marner" and "Middlemarch")

george eliot