George Eliot Research Paper

The Victorian Era Featuring George Eliot The Victorian era (1837-1901) is the time in which Queen Victoria ruled over the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Queen Victoria was born in 1819, ascended the throne in 1837, and died in 1901. During this time, there were “developments in governance, economic and social life, science, and learning” (MacRaild). The Victorian era was a time for transitioning and new ideas that would be reflected across the world. In government, the Reform Bill’s of 1832, 1867, and 1884 changed the “structure of parliament,” and “the expansion of local, middle-class political power with the Municipal Corporations Act in 1835.” (MacRaild). In religion, the Religious Census of 1851 showed a “weakening

She was born on November 22, 1819 in Warwickshire, England to Robert Evans and Christiana Pearson. She was the youngest of 5 children and lived on the Arbury estate that was managed by her father. After her mother’s passing in 1836, Mary left school to take care of her father and the household. In 1841, she and her father moved to Coventry where she befriended Charles Bray and was introduced to a world of intellectuals. In 1851, Mary settled in London and soon became the editor for the Westminster Review. While working for the journal, she met George Henry Lewes, and their relationship caused a scandal because she was living with a married man. Lewes encouraged Mary to write and she went on to publish her first collection of short stories called Scenes of Clerical Life (1857) under the pseudonym of George Eliot. Lewes passed away in 1878, and on May 6, 1880, Mary married a friend named John Walter Cross. On December 22, 1880, Mary died of heart failure and was buried next to Lewes in Highgate Cemetery in Westminster Abbey ("George Eliot."

Motion pictures adapted from some of her novels. Her most famous works include:

Adam Bede (1859),

Silas Marner (1861), and

Middlemarch (1871-1872) ("George Eliot." Encyclopedia). George Eliot’s Silas Marner is still read today in many high schools across the country for its “version of secular redemption through human love” ("George Eliot." Concise) George explored “the tragedy and comedy of life as it is lived in carefully delimited rural communities” ("George Eliot." Concise) to create her well-known masterpiece.

Works Cited

"George Eliot." Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography, vol. 4, Gale, 1991. Biography in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/K1655000062/BIC1? Accessed 10 June 2017.

"George Eliot." Encyclopedia of World Biography, Gale, 1998. Biography in