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Senate House Library

George Eliot first editions on display in the Library

Date

Written by
Tansy Barton

We have first editions, letters, and periodicals related to George Eliot’s life and work from our collections on display in the Seng Tee Lee Centre on the 4th floor of the Library. This is inspired by and in support of the inaugural Nineteenth Century Study Week at the Institute of English Studies. The display in the Library will continue up until Friday 1 June 2018.

George Eliot as journalist and editor

George Eliot’s career began as a contributor to monthly and weekly periodicals. One of Eliot’s first published works was a translation of The Life of Jesus by David Freidrich Strauss, under her birth name Mary Anne (sometimes known as ‘Marian’) Evans.  This brought her into contact with the writer, publisher and bookseller John Chapman, who in 1851 bought the liberal journal The Westminster Review. George Eliot contributed to and edited The Review for its first few years under Chapman’s ownership, bringing together a group and writers and intellectuals to support the journal. 

Before moving into fiction, Eliot also contributed to several other leading journals, including The Saturday Review, Fraser’s Magazine, and The Leader, edited by her partner, George Henry Lewes. Her first contribution to The Westminster Review and a reprint of articles she contributed to the Coventry Herald and Observer in 1846-47 are part of the display.

An unconventional life

George Eliot was involved with many radical thinkers, reformers and writers at the ‘Rosehill Circle’, her friends Charles and Cara Bray in Coventry and at Chapman’s home and business premises at 142 Strand. Through these connections she met the philosopher Herbert Spencer, with whom she had a life-long friendship. On display are two letters to Spencer from Eliot. 

Eliot also met George Henry Lewes and would spend most of her life with him but it was not a conventional Victorian relationship; Lewes was already married and had an open relationship with his wife, Agnes Jervis. They could not divorce, but from 1854, Lewes and Eliot began living as husband and wife, with Eliot referring to herself as Mrs Marian Lewes. After Lewes death in 1878, in her grief, Eliot grew close to their friend John Cross, and they married in 1880, just eight months before her death.  Cross’s George Eliot's Life, edited from her journals and letters left out much of her unconventional life, including all mention of John Chapman, but did much to establish her posthumous reputation.      

Becoming George Eliot, the author

In September 1856, Eliot began her first work of fiction: The first part of Scenes from Clerical Life, ‘The Sad Fortunes of Reverend Amos Barton’. Lewes sent the manuscript of the first part of the story to the publisher and proprietor of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, John Blackwood, in November 1856 as a proposal for a series of clerical scenes on behalf of a friend. The first part appeared in the January 1857 and on 4th February 1857, Marian Evans first signed a letter to her publishers as George Eliot.  The first novel to be published under that name, Adam Bede followed in 1859, published by Blackwood’s as a complete work, and Eliot was soon established as one of the leading authors of the day. First editions of Adam Bede and her greatest work Middlemarch, alongside the first serial publications of Scenes and Romola are part of the display.

George Eliot collection at Senate House Library:

Our holdings of works by and on George Eliot can be explored through the Library catalogue. For more  information on summer schools and study weeks visit the Institute of English Studies website. 

The display can be viewed in the Seng Tee Lee Centre, accessed via the Special Collections Reading Room on the 4th floor of the Library.

About the author

Tansy Barton
Research Librarian & Curator of Staging Magic - The Story Behind The Illusion

This page was last updated on 2 July 2024