George Eliot
A Life
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- £12.99
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- £12.99
Publisher Description
This richly enjoyable biography of the great Victorian novelist reminds us how truly revolutionary was George Eliot... [Ashton] provides luminously sane readings of the marvellous novels.' A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard
'Excellent... Ashton cites Eliot's achievement in a literary landscape which moves from Scott and George Sand to Dickens, Tennyson and Browning... a fluent, vivid book... it makes one thrill again to the breadth of Eliot's genius and the passionate, vulnerable nature that accompanied her wide-ranging mind.' Jenny Uglow, Independent on Sunday
'An extremely impressive work... the George Eliot who emerges from Professor Ashton's book is a remarkable woman of exceptional integrity whose life expresses the spirit of the Victorian age, even as it goes against the very grain of it.' Susie Boyt, Sunday Express
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
She defied her father over religion, lived openly with a married man, and brought a subtle realism to the English novel. It is tempting to think of George Eliot (1819-1880) as better matched to our century than her own. But Ashton's biography draws widely from Eliot's letters and those of her contemporaries to provide a rich social context for a woman who embraced change, yet seldom advertised it. Ashton carefully traces the transformation of the severe but inquiring Midlands girl, Mary Ann Evans, into the agnostic and witty Marian Evans who moved to London in her 20s and began a career as translator and critic. Her widening circle included her soon-to-be lover, the writer and editor G.H. Lewes. Author of an earlier Lewes biography, Ashton adopts a protective tone toward the couple, who shocked even their iconoclastic friends with their lifelong affair. Yet it was Lewes who buoyed Marian's fragile confidence that enabled her to become George Eliot. From the early Scenes of Clerical Life to Adam Bede, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and beyond, Ashton's narrative finds momentum and rhythm, less as literary criticism than as a portrait of the work of writing. (Eliot's publisher, John Blackwood, emerges as a memorably sweet character in his own right.) Ashton's tendency to overpraise her subject is forgivable. She leaves the reader with a rich portrait of Marian Evans and a strong desire to return to George Eliot.
