Eliot, George (1819-1880) Also known as: Evans, Mary Ann (1819-1880)

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Birth Date

1819-11-22

Death Date

1880-12-22

Birthplace

Nuneaton, England

Biographical Text

George Eliot was one of the leading writers of the Victorian period. Her real name was Mary Ann Evans, using a pseudonym so her work to be taken seriously, as during the time there was a stereotype that women authors only wrote lighthearted romances. Growing up she was not considered beautiful enough to marry, but she was intelligent, and thus her father sent her to school. In 1836 Evans and her father moved to Coventry, and Evans met Charles and Cara Bay, whose home was known as the Rosehill Circle and was a sanctuary for people who held radical views on religion. Here she met people such as Robert Owen, Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1850 she moved to London and began to call herself Marian Evans. She became assistant editor of The Westminster Review and contributed many essays to it. In 1854 she began to live with George Henry Lewis, who was in an open marriage with Agnes Jervis, who had children with both Lewis and Thornton Leigh Hunt. In the mid-1850s she began to write under her pen name, and in 1859 she published her first complete novel, Adam Bede, which instantly became popular.

Evans married John Cross, in 1880. However, Evans died of a throat infection and kidney disease in the same year.

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Edited By

Hajo, Cathy Moran

Lichon, Sara Catherine

Rights

Public domain

Gender

Female

First appears

1902

Bibliography and Links

SNAC

Wikipedia

Citation

“Eliot, George (1819-1880),” Jane Addams Digital Edition, accessed February 17, 2026, https://digital.janeaddams.ramapo.edu/items/show/1194.

Eliot, George (1819-1880) Also known as: Evans, Mary Ann (1819-1880)

Item Relations

First Report of the Labor Museum at Hull House, 1902

The Newer Ideals of Peace, July 7, 1902

The Servant Problem, September 1903

Jane Addams's Own Story of Her Work: How the Work at Hull-House Has Grown (Third of Three Installments), May 1906

Autobiographical Notes Upon Twenty Years at Hull-House: Early Undertakings at Hull-House, June 1910

Autobiographical Notes Upon Twenty Years at Hull-House: The Resources of the Immigrant, August 1910

Emotion and the Thinking Cap, October 1912

Filial Relations, 1915

Address of Miss Jane Addams at the Funeral of Mary Jane Hawes Wilmarth, August 30, 1919

Eulogy for Mary Jane Wilmarth, October 8, 1919

In Recognition of the Leadership of Women, April 10, 1929

In Recognition of the Leadership of Women, April 10, 1929

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