The Oxford Companion to English Literature | Eliot, George
Eliot, George
(
Mary
Ann
, later
Marian, Evans
)
(
1819
–
80
), the youngest surviving child of
Robert
Evans
, agent for an estate in Warwickshire. In her girlhood she was particularly close to her brother Isaac, from whom she was later estranged. At school she became a convert to evangelicalism; she was freed from this by the influence of
Charles
Bray
, a freethinking Coventry manufacturer (a development which temporarily alienated her father), but remained strongly influenced by religious concepts of love and duty; her works contain many affectionate portraits of Dissenters and clergymen. She pursued her education rigorously, reading widely, and devoted herself to completing a translation of
Strauss
's Life of Jesus, which appeared without her name in
1846
. In
1850
she met
J.
Chapman
, and became a contributor to the
Westminster Review
; she moved to 142 Strand, London, in
1851
, as a paying...
[The entire page is 871 words long]
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