Mary Ann Evans was born on November 22, 1819, and you’ve very likely heard of her. That’s the case even if you’re now saying “Mary Ann Evans? Who the heck is Mary Ann Evans?” And you probably are saying that, because you don’t know Mary Ann Evans by her real name; you know her pen name: George Eliot.
Evans was born in England on an estate called Arbury Hall. Her family was not the landed gentry that owned the estate; her father was the estate manager. The family was comfortable, but not wealthy. Evans was not considered beautiful enough to have a good chance at getting married, so her father fell back onto what was Plan B at the time, at least for women: she got an education. Her formal schooling ended when she was about 16, but thanks to her father she had access to the library at Arbury Hall, and read voraciously. She read a great deal of classical Greek literature, and the critic Christopher Stray saw that influence in her writing: “George Eliot’s novels draw heavily on Greek literature (only one of her books can be printed correctly without the use of a Greek typeface), and her themes are often influenced by Greek tragedy.”
When Evans was 21, her brother Isaac got married and their father moved, with Evans, to Coventry so Isaac and his bride could have the family home. In Coventry Evans became very close to Charles and Cara Bray, wealthy philanthropists who were radicals for the era. They had a large mansion that hosted intellectuals who regularly debated “radical views.” That’s how Evans met Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herbert Spencer, Robert Owen, and David Strauss. Strauss’ version of radicalism was religious; he had written a book in German questioning the literal truth of the Bible. Evans translated it into English, and it was published in 1846 as The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined. It was Evan’s first major publication.
When her father died in 1849, Evans traveled to Switzerland with her friends the Brays, and stayed after they returned home. She lived alone there for a year, in a house that’s still there. It’s on Lake Geneva, near the United Nations buildings, and her stay is commemorated with a plaque. While she was there she evidently decided on her future career, because when she returned to England she moved to London, revised her given name from Mary Ann to Marian, and stayed at John Chapman’s house. She had met him at the Brays’ mansion in Coventry, and he had published her translation of Strauss. And of course, having been one of the Brays’ compatriots, Chapman was pretty radical himself; he lived in his house with his wife and his mistress. It’s not clear whether Evans was welcomed into their open marriage as well as their home.
As well as books, Chapman published a radical left-wing journal, The Westminster Review. Evans became the de-facto editor and leading writing for the journal, and updated its design and layout. By 1854, though, Evans moved out of the Chapman residence to live with the philosopher George Henry Lewes. He was already married just like Chapman, and also in an open marriage, and this time Evans did enter the open marriage as well as the house. Evans and Lewes referred to themselves as married, and Evans began signing her name as “Mary Ann Evans Lewes” even though they had no formal legal marriage. And they were completely open about the whole thing, which in 1950s England was quite a scandal.
Around 1856 Evans adopted the pen name George Eliot in order, she said, to avoid having her writing stereotyped as an unserious romance because it was written by a woman. She had already published a sort of manifesto in the Westminster Review: Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. She criticized contemporary fiction written by women as trivial and having ridiculous plots. She was also already well known as a translator and critic, and wanted the novels she was planning to write to be judged separately.
Her first book, Scenes of Clerical Life, was published in two volumes in 1858, and received quite good reviews. The public apparently thought it had been written by a country parson. She followed up with Adam Bede in 1859, which became even more popular. Nobody knew who “George Eliot” really was, and another man (Joseph Liggins) even claimed that he was the author. Evans finally admitted publicly that she was George Eliot.
Evans kept writing novels for the next fifteen years, but after George Lewes died in 1878, Evans spent six months editing Lewes’ final work, Life and Mind. Eighteen months later she married John Walter Cross (in a normal, sanctioned ceremony) and changed her name again to Mary Ann Cross. This marriage was controversial too, though, because John Cross was 20 years younger than Evans. She only lived until 1880, and probably died from kidney disease, which she’d suffered from for years.
The novels of George Eliot have been called “English novels written for grown-up people,” and critic Harold Bloom declared Eliot one of the most important Western writers of all time. Middlemarch, probably her best-known work, was voted first among British novels, and more than one critic has named it the greatest novel in the English language. Not bad for somebody who only qualified for Plan B.
