George Eliot
George Eliot, pseudonym of Marian Evans (1819-1880)
This article appeared in The Times Literary Supplement of 20 November 1919, and was reprinted in
The Common Reader: First Series. Virginia Woolf also wrote on George Eliot in the Daily Herald of 9
March 1921 and the Nation and Athenaeum of 30 October 1926.
To read George Eliot attentively is to become aware how little one knows about her. It is also to become aware of
the credulity, not very creditable to one's insight, with which, half consciously and partly maliciously, one had
accepted the late Victorian version of a deluded woman who held phantom sway over subjects even more deluded
than herself. At what moment and by what means her spell was broken it is difficult to ascertain. Some people
attribute it to the publication of her Life. Perhaps George Meredith, with his phrase about the mercurial little
showman' and the errant woman' on the daïs, gave point and poison......
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Approximate Word Count: 3873
Approximate Pages: 15 (260 words per double-spaced page) |