1819-1880 George Eliot

The great woman who wrote under the pen-name of George Eliot was a humorist, too. She had a rich, deep humor of her own, and a wit that crystallized into sayings which are not epigrams only because their wisdom strikes more than their smartness. But humor was not, as with Thackeray and Dickens, her point of view. A country girl, the daughter of a land agent and surveyor at Nuneaton, in Warwickshire, her early letters and journals exhibit a Calvinistic gravity and moral severity. Later, when her truth to her convictions led her to renounce the Christian belief, she carried into positivism the same religious earnestness, and wrote the one English hymn of the religion of humanity:
From Chaucer to Tennyson, by Henry A. Beers, et al 1894

Mary Ann Evans was born at South Farm, a mile from Griff, in the parish of Colton, Warwickshire, England, November 22, 1819. In after years she adopted the abbreviated form of her name, and was known by her friends as Marian. When she was six months old the family moved to Griff House, which was situated half-way between Bedworth, a mining village, and the manufacturing town of Nuneaton. In approaching Griff from Nuneaton, a little valley, known as Griff Hollows, is passed, much resembling the “Red
Deeps” of _The Mill on the Floss_. On the right, a little beyond, is Griff House, a comfortable and substantial dwelling surrounded by pleasant gardens and lawns.

Robert Evans, her father, was born at Ellaston, Staffordshire, of a substantial family of mechanics and craftsmen. He was of massive build, tall, wide-shouldered and strong, and his features were of a marked, emphatic cast. He began life as a master carpenter, then became a forester, and finally a land agent. He was induced to settle in Warwickshire by Sir Roger Newdigate, his principal employer, and for the remainder of his life he had charge of five large estates in the neighborhood. In this employment he was successful, being respected and trusted to the fullest extent by his employers, his name becoming a synonym for trustworthiness. Marian many times sketched the main traits of her father’s character, as in the love of perfect work in “Stradivarius.” He had Adam Bede’s stalwart figure and robust manhood. Caleb Garth, in _Middlemarch_, is in many ways a fine
portrait of him as to the nature of his employment, his delight in the soil, and his honest, rugged character.

<cite>George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy. George Willis Cooke 1884</cite>

The life of Mary Ann Evans falls for critical purposes into three well-defined divisions: the early days of country life with home and family and school; her career as a savant; and the
later years, when she performed her service as story-teller. Unquestionably, the first period was most important in influencing her genius. It was in the home days at Griff, the
school days at Nuneaton nearby, that those deepest, most permanent impressions were absorbed which are given out in the finest of her fictions. Hence came the primal inspiration which produced her best. And it is because she drew most generously
upon her younger life in her earlier works that it is they which are most likely to survive the shocks of Time.

The experiences of Eliot’s childhood, youth and young womanhood were those which taught her the bottom facts about middle-class country life in the mid-century, and in a mid-county of England; Shakspere’s county of Warwick. Those experiences gave her such
sympathetic comprehension of the human case in that environment that she became its chronicler, as Dickens had become the chronicler of the lower middle-class of the cities. Unerringly, she generalized from the microcosm of Warwickshire to the life of the world and guessed the universal human heart. With utmost sympathy, joined with a nice power of scrutiny, she saw and understood the character-types of the village, when there was a
village life which has since passed away: the yeoman, the small farmer, the operative in the mill, the peasant, the squire and the parson, the petty tradesman, the man of the professions: the worker with his hands at many crafts.

Masters of the English Novel A Study Of Principles And Personalities

Author: Richard Burton