George Eliot: The Last Victorian - Softcover

It is Kathryn Hughes' achievement in this excellent, extremely readable biography to show that neither George Eliot nor the Victorians were what we sometimes lazily think them. Newsday Writers like George Eliot are capable of changing you. Eliot, at great cost, achieved for herself an intellectual and sexual independence that took another three-quarters of a century for most women to gain... [This] fine biography-fluid, readable, and intelligent-may become the definitive study of Eliot, one of the more telling eccentrics of an eccentric period... [An] enlightening and entertaining literary biography. Elle In this shrewd work, Hughes takes the long view, illuminating the way that Eliot's often painful choices changed other people's minds. The intellectual and emotional events that seared her life are all here-Eliot's loss of faith, her family's fury, her unconsecrated union with a married man, her tragic second marriage. The New Yorker Masterly... This exhaustively researched biography, relying on primary texts, reveals Hughes's impressive storytelling ability. She portrays Eliot as a woman of depth and intelligence, one who gave voice to the uncertainties of a tumultuous era. Highly recommended. Library Journal Hughes writes well, neither patronizing her subject nor unduly attempting to champion her. She is good on the human weaknesses and vanity which underlay Eliot's proclaimed convictions and certainties... [An] admirably sensible biography. -- John Bayley The New York Review Of Books [A] triumph, intelligent, persuasive, and beautifully written. London Sunday Times Here is a gifted woman's life lived courageously on its own terms. Victoria Magazine

Mary Ann Evans, aka George Eliot (1819-1880) achieved lasting renown with the novels Silas Marner, Middlemarch, and Adam Bede. Her masterworks were written after years of living an unconventional life, including a scandalous voyage to Europe with the married writer and editor George Henry Lewes. The scandal intensified when she moved in with Lewes after he separated from his wife. Eliot re-entered London's social life years later, when her literary success made it impossible for respectable society to dismiss her (even Queen Victoria enjoyed her books). She counted among her friends and supporters Dickens, Trollope, and several other Victorian literati. In this intimate biography, author Hughes provides insight into Eliot's life and work, weighing Eliot's motivations for her controversial actions, and examining the paradoxical Victorian society which she documented to perfection in her novels.