THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT ALSO TO LOOK AT KIP FENN, A MAJOR NOVEL ABOUT THE 21st CENTURY
- freely available on this site
Eliot, George ___ 1819-1880 ___ British
___ writer
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Mary Ann Evans was born at Arbury,
Warwickshire, the daughter of a land agent to the Earl of Lonsdale. As a
child she was an avid reader. Her mother died when she was still a teenager,
and when her father retired in 1841, she went with him to live in Coventry,
and kept house. There, she joined a group of intellectuals, including Charles
Bray, who were studying the Bible, and became more sceptical about Anglicanism.
Her first literary work, 'Life of Jesus', a translation from German, was
published in 1846. After her father's death in 1849, she travelled on the
Continent with the Brays, and moved to London, where she worked as a subeditor
for the 'Westminster Review'. In 1854, she started a relationship with George
Henry Lewes, who was still married but separated from his wife. They lived
together which caused a social scandal, and travelled abroad on various
occasions. Lewes encouraged her to write, and, in 1856, she began publishing
'Scenes of Clerical Life' in 'Blackwood's Magazine' under the pseudonym
George Eliot. By 1861, she had published three of her most famous novels:
'Adam Bede', 'The Mill on the Floss' and 'Silas Marner', although it was
to be another ten years before she finished 'Middlemarch'. After Lewes died
in 1878, Eliot married John Walter Cross, who, later, published a biography
of her life based largely on letters and journals.
One
biography link
DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1855-1877 ___ domestic literary
travel music health
WEB TEXT LINKS
some
references
ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Yale
University Libraries: Beinecke Library
New York Public Library: Manuscripts and Archives Division ___ 1879
SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
George Eliot's Life as Related
in her Letters and Journals
The Journals of George Eliot
May 2005
THIS IS THE DIARY JUNCTION - DATA AND LINKS FOR OVER 500 HISTORICAL AND LITERARY DIARISTS
Please
email if you have any corrections, additions or comments. |
IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS:
1) The first line of basic information
may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different
names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or
uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown,
or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British'
a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was
compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts
were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if
they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates
and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with
caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are
only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies.
4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges,
and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising.
I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some
variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited
myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their
original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the
titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries. |