Abstract
Mary Anne Evans (the novelist George Eliot) was born on 22 November 1819 at South Farm, Arbury Hall, the estate of the Newdigate family near Nuneaton, North Warwickshire. Her father, Robert Evans, was Francis Newdigate’s agent. Apart from overseeing the estate, Evans had many business interests; he was widely respected as a skilled carpenter, surveyor, mining manager and farmer. He was on terms of friendship with his employer, often bringing his daughter Mary Anne with him to the great house or on his other varied errands in the vicinity. Robert Evans had two elder children from a previous marriage, and two more, Chrissey and Isaac, from his marriage with Christina Pearson; Mary Anne was their youngest surviving child. In 1820 the Evans family moved to Griff House, Chilvers Coton, on the edge of the estate. It was here that Mary Anne Evans grew up, enjoying especially the companionship of her brother Isaac on the farm and surrounding land.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
In G. S. Haigh’s George Eliot; a Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 7, evidence for George Elio’s early devotion to Scott is found in the epigraph of Chapter 57 of Middlemarch: Scott was still ‘living far away’ while young Mary Anne Evans’s reading of Waverley was interrupted. Scot’s balanced and tolerant view of historical change was a permanent influence on George Elio’s thinking;
see V. A. Dodd, George Eliot: An Intellectual Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), pp. 72–74.
Letters, vol. I, p. 206. Letter of Mrs C. Bray to Sara S. Hennell, 14 February 1846. See D. F. Strauss, The Life of Jesus Critically Examined, ed. P. C. Hodgson (London: SCM Press, 1972), pp. xlviii–xlix.
J. W. Cross, George Eliot’s Life as Related in her Letters and Journals (Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1885), 3 vols; new edn (revised with additions and deletions), 1 vol., (1887), pp. 55–58.
I. Taylor, George Eliot: Woman of Contradictions (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), p. 60.
G. H. Lewes, The Life and Works of Goethe (London: D. Nutt, 1855), vol. II, p. 340 (Part VI, chapter vii).
The very little may include work on an unwritten novel set in the Napoleonic wars, for which there are two notebooks extant, one at Princeton University Library, the other in the Hugh Walpole collection at the King’s School, Canterbury. Four pages in George Eliot’s hand from the latter were published with an introduction and annotations by William Baker as ‘A new George Eliot manuscript’ in George Eliot: Centenary Essays and an Unpublished Fragmenty ed. A. Smith (London: Vision Press, 1980), pp. 9–20. A period of either 1877–1878 or 1879–1880 has been assigned to this fragment of a novel, which has a Midland sitting and details of two land-owning families by the name of Forrest and Pollexfen, allusions to the Isle of Man, Ireland and Nova Scotia, a reference to the telephone and a gende nudge against fox-hunting; ‘as many foxes were allowed to remain and enjoy their known pleasure in being hunted … handsomely provided with covers’, p. 11.
J. W. Cross, George Eliot’s Life (1885), vol. III, p. 439. See also Letters, vol. VII, p. 351. Letter of J. W. Cross to Elma Stuart, 23 December 1880.
Copyright information
© 1993 Alan W. Bellringer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Bellringer, A.W. (1993). George Eliot’s Life. In: George Eliot. Macmillan Modern Novelists. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22810-2_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22810-2_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-51905-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-22810-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)