ELIOT, George

"All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet"

Mary Ann Evans worked under the pen name, George Eliot, to ensure her writing was taken seriously in an era when female authors were associated almost entirely with romantic fiction. 

Her first book Scenes of Clerical Life was published in 1858, relating anecdotes from her native Warwickshire. It drew the attention of critics; indeed Charles Dickens professed himself an admirer. Later novels include Adam Bede, Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch and Silas Marner. 
In her personal life Eliot caused scandal by living with George Lewes, a married man. The pair were part of a literary circle and as Eliot's writing grew in popularity, so their relationship became tolerated. After Lewes' death in 1878 she married John Cross, 20 years her junior.

For first editions, library sets and finely bound copies of George Eliot's work see below.