First published 2017
Nathan Sheppard gathers the essential critical writings of Mary Anne Evans, the Victorian author who wrote under the pen name George Eliot. Evans chose her male pseudonym to ensure serious reception of her work and to separate her fiction from her established reputation as an editor and critic. She wanted to avoid the perception that women writers only produced lightweight romantic fiction. The collection reveals the intellectual foundations behind novels like Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. These essays demonstrate how Evans developed her approach to realism and psychological depth in fiction set across provincial England. Her adoption of the George Eliot identity also protected her private life from public judgment, particularly regarding her relationship with married writer George Henry Lewes. Sheppard's compilation shows the critical mind that produced what Martin Amis and Julian Barnes have called the greatest novel in English literature.
Genres: biography, essays, literary-fiction, criticism, 19th-century, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: gender-disguise, pseudonym
Setting: England, Provincial England
Period: Victorian Era
160 pages · Paperback · CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform