Description
Book SynopsisGeorge Eliot's intelligence and her wide knowledge of history, literature, philosophy and political thought shaped her fiction and her non-fiction. This intellectual biography tells the story of her development from her initial Christian culture towards a humanistic and progressive world view which informed her crowning literary achievements.
Trade Review"One strength of the book is that it returns to some of Eliot's essays, attending not only to the points that have been central to recent critical discussion, but also drawing out elements that have been overlooked." --Victorian Studies
Table of ContentsIntroduction; 1. The 'evangelical': starting out in a Christian culture; 2. The apostate: moving beyond the Christian mythos; 3. The journalist: editing, reviewing, shaping a worldview; 4. The Germanist: balancing the counterweight of German thinkers; 5. The novelist: mixing realism, naturalism and myth-making; 6. The historian: tracking the idealistic - utopian and national - in Romola and The Spanish Gypsy; 7. The 'radical': taking an anti-political stance in Felix Holt; 8. The encyclopaedist: transcending the past in Middlemarch; 9. The visionary: transmitting ideals in Daniel Deronda; 10. The intellectual: cultural critique in Impressions of Theophrastus Such; Works cited; Index.
