ELIOT 



2011 



ELIOT 



vate schools for young ladies, Marian, at the 

 age of seventeen, was called by the death of 

 her mother to take entire charge of the house- 

 hold. In the midst of the cares and responsi- 

 bilities of her new duties, however, she found 

 time for a vast amount of miscellaneous read- 

 ing. When she was twenty-one the family 

 removed to the thriving manufacturing town 

 of Coventry, where she formed a new circle of 

 friends. Her most intimate associates were 

 freethinkers in matters of religion, and under 

 their influence she turned aside from her youth- 

 ful convictions and became a freethinker her- 

 self. This was the beginning of a spiritual 

 struggle that left her convinced that duty is 

 the supreme law in life, an idea that finds 

 expression in all of her novels. 



In 1849, on the death of her father, she trav- 

 eled on the Continent with friends, and after 

 her return to England began to write for the 

 Westminster Review. She was soon made 

 assistant editor of this magazine, an event 

 which marks the real beginning of her literary 

 career. Herbert Spencer, Carlyle, Harriet Mar- 

 tineau and George Henry Lewes became her 

 close personal friends, and with the latter, him- 

 self a writer of some distinction, she formed 

 a friendship that both regarded as marriage. 

 Under the inspiration of his sympathy ' and 

 companionship she sent to one of the mag- 

 azines, in 1857, her first story, The Sad For- 

 tunes of the Reverend Amos Barton. This 

 simple tale of the trials of a poor clergyman 

 and his noble-hearted wife was published the 

 following year with several other stories under 

 the title Scenes of Clerical Life. 



In 1858 appeared her first long novel, Adam 

 Bede. It was received by the public with an 

 enthusiasm for which its author was quite un- 

 prepared, and it has always remained one of 

 her most popular books. Certainly it is one 

 of the most natural and unlabored, for it is 

 comparatively free from the analysis of char- 

 acter and motive that is carried to an extreme 

 in her last novel, Daniel Deronda. In realistic 

 portrayal of country life and character Adam 

 Bede is probably surpassed by no other book. 

 Then followed The Mill on the Floss (1860), in 

 which she reached the heights of beautiful 

 expression, picturing with a tender and loving 

 touch her own girlhood experiences. 



Silas Marner, the most perfectly-constructed 

 of her novels, was published in 1861. In this 

 is revealed the miracle wrought in the life of 

 a hermit weaver who has lost faith in humanity 

 and who is reclaimed by the loving influence 



of a little child. Romola (1862-1863), her only 

 historical novel, marks a change in background, 

 for it is a picture of Italian life in the days 

 of the great Savonarola. In Felix Holt (1866), 

 Middlemarch (1871-1872) and Daniel Deronda 

 (1876), she returned to English scenes and 

 characters. Meanwhile, in 1868, she had pro- 

 duced a dramatic poem in blank verse, The 

 Spanish Gypsy. Her last work, a collection of 

 essays entitled The Impressions of Theophrastus 

 Such, appeared in 1879, the year after Mr. 

 Lewes died. His death was a terrible shock to 

 her, and it meant the end of her creative 

 vitality. Two years afterward she married 

 John Walter Cross, who later became her 

 biographer. She lived only six months after 

 their marriage. 



In George Eliot's novels there is more of 

 tears than of laughter. She viewed life 

 seriously, and the spiritual struggles of her 

 characters, their development or their degenera- 

 tion, were matters of supreme interest to her. 

 Yet her novels are not all gloom. Her famous 

 chapter in Silas Marner which describes the 

 village worthies sitting about the tavern fire 

 and philosophizing on ghosts is one of the 

 brightest examples of humorous writing in Eng- 

 lish fiction. One of the strongest elements in 

 her personal character was her craving for love 

 and sympathy. Again and again this is re- 

 flected in the tender note that may be found 

 in all of her stories, a tenderness which is 

 nowhere more beautifully expressed than in the 

 simple words which tell the tragic fate of Tom 

 and Maggie Tulliver: 



The boat reappeared, but brother and sister 

 had gone down in an ^embrace never to be 

 parted ; living through again in one supreme 

 moment the days when they had clasped their 

 little hands in love and roamed the daisied fields 

 together. B.M.W. 



ELIOT, JOHN (1604-1690), an American 

 colonial missionary, called the "Apostle to the 

 Indians," was of English birth and was grad- 

 uated from Cambridge in 1622. He settled in 

 Boston in 1631, where he devoted his life to 

 bettering the condition of the Indians. His 

 first step in this direction was to master their 

 dialects, which he accomplished with the assist- 

 ance of a young Indian convert. Besides his 

 successful missionary labors he did much liter- 

 ary work of lasting value. His great life 

 achievement was the translation of the Bible 

 into the Massachusetts dialect of the Algonquin 

 tongue. He also published an Indian gram- 

 mar and assisted in the production of the Bay 



