Eliot, George, 1819-1880

Born Mary Ann Evans in 1819, George Eliot was the daughter of a land agent who managed estates in the rural midlands, a formative experience that gave her an insight into country society that later greatly influenced and enriched her first works of fiction. At different times of her life, she also spelled her name as Mary Anne, Marian, and Marianne, adopting the pen-name of Eliot only after her first work of fiction was published in 1857.

Eliot was brought up in a narrow religious tradition, and at school she became a convert to Evangelicalism. Charles Bray, a free thinking manufacturer, influenced her skepticism of orthodox beliefs, although she never strayed from the ethical teachings of her childhood religion. Her works contain themes of love and duty, and affectionate portraits of clergymen and dissenters. She began her literary career with translations from the German of two works of religious speculation, of which Strauss’s Life of Jesus was published in 1846 without her name.

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