George Eliot

1. George Eliot Silas Marner (1861)

2. Mary Ann Evans • Born 22 November 1819. She was the daughter of Robert Evans, a large estate manager in Warwickshire. • Marian was a self-educated intellectual (studied mathematics, music and ancient classics, as well as literature) and only began to write at the age of thirty six, having been a leading figure in London literary magazine life as an editor. • Marian married late in life, to John Walter Cross, but had lived with George Henry Lewes for 24 years prior to his death in 1878. • Marion was known for her charitable works and also suffered from depression at times during her life.

3. Major Works • Under her nom de plume, George Eliot, Evans produced a number of famous works during her short career (she died at just 61). • Her novels include: The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch, Adam Bede and Silas Marner

4. Major Themes • The loss of English village life in the 18th and 19th centuries. • The impact of the Industrial Revolution on British life. • Religion and morality

5. Silas Marner • Set in the fictional milling town of Raveloe, Silas Marner is the eponymously titled tale of a weaver who falls foul of the false accusations of a religious cult, becoming a miserly recluse before finding redemption in the form of a lost orphan. • It explores the notion that God will defend the innocent and that ‘each seed bring will forth a crop after its kind.’