Jane Austen and George Eliot: The Lady and The Radical

by Edward Whitley

In October 1851, a chance meeting in a Piccadilly bookshop changed the course of literary history. For it was here that Mary Ann Evans, an unworldly young scholar, was introduced to the love of her life, the critic George Lewes. Encouraged and supported by Lewes, Evans became the queen of literary London under her pen name, George Eliot.

In nurturing Eliot's talent, Lewes drew inspiration from the works of an unfashionable author of the previous generation by the name of Jane Austen. On the face of it, Austen and Eliot had little in common. Jane Austen was a genteel spinster who spent her life in Hampshire, painting Regency domestic dramas with delicate irony and unfailing charm. George Eliot, meanwhile, was a radical intellectual who lived scandalously with a married man, travelled widely in Europe and documented with stirring realism the social upheavals of her age.

And yet, when George Eliot embarked on her career as an author in the late 1850s, the works of Jane Austen were at her side, feeding her imagination. Separated by time, circumstance and temperament, the two writers nevertheless had a vital impetus in to prove the value of a woman's eye in a man's world.

Packed with quotes from letters, diaries and the nation's favourite novels, this lively history traces the surprising connections between two of our brightest literary stars and shows, for the first time, how each can be illuminated by the other's light.

Genres: Nonfiction

304 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 20, 2025

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

“[T]here is no species of art which is so free from rigid requirements. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form, and yet be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements—genuine observation, humour, and passion.”
— Mary Ann Evans: ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists.’

The title of this book instantly reminded me of essays I used to be set in school which began, “Compare and contrast . . .” for its wording instantly set up similarities and oppositions: the works of two prominent nineteenth-century female writers whose social standings and politics nevertheless seem to have been fundamentally at odds.

But yet while Austen and Eliot might appear like chalk and cheese Whitley’s fascinating thesis is that there is more to link the pair than at first appears, that the conduit between their output was facilitated by a fan of Austen who introduced her work to the woman who became George Eliot – and that he did it via correspondence with the novelist who called herself Currer Bell.

And what I find revealing is the fact that both Austen and Eliot wrote humorous yet critical pieces about the challenges facing female authors. One was ‘Plan of a Novel, according to Hints from Various Quarters,’ and the other was ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’; both address reader expectations and literary realities but in their own respective styles.

Passion
But we start with George Lewes – variously an author, journalist, critic, philosopher, physiologist and novelist – who began a correspondence with the author of Jane Eyre (1847) after being given a review copy by their mutual acquaintance William Smith Williams. To hide her gender Charlotte Brontë had taken the ambiguous name Currer Bell, but unlike most critics Lewes was convinced the author was female. Though we only have Brontë’s replies she addresses Lewes’s comments and criticisms, often politely but very firmly disparaging his opinions and clearly disliking his apparent mansplaining.

One key point is that he pushed her to read Austen, whose work she’d never heard of but which Lewes thought of as the epitome of 19th-century fiction. Brontë’s opinion of Pride and Prejudice was that it came across as the literary equivalent of a “highly cultivated garden” but that it lacked the passion typified by the wild open spaces of the Yorkshire moors: “no open country – no fresh air – no blue hill – no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses.”

As it happens, two years later in 1850 Brontë read Austen’s Emma, and, writing to William Smith Williams at her publishers, expressed some approval (“I have likewise read it with interest and with just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable”) while nevertheless showering Austen with faint praise:

“She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well; there is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in the painting . . .”

Curiously, in 1855 Brontë herself went as far as to begin a novel entitled Emma, though she subsequently died before the plot could develop.

Observation
If Lewes got no further in persuading Brontë to read more Austen and start to appreciate her more, he made more progress with Mary Ann Evans, who after moving from Coventry to London had been made editor of the Westminster Review. When they met in 1851 (in a bookshop of course!) there was an instant attraction of minds between the woman now calling herself Marian and Lewes, the introduction made via William Smith Williams, who was also Charlotte Brontë’s literary editor.

But it wasn’t until 1856 when staying in Tenby that, on Lewes’s urging, Marian decided to write fiction, just after publishing her Westminster Review article ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’. As background research she read works on the French Revolution by Burke, Carlyle, Martineau, and Macaulay plus … Austen’s Mansfield Park.

In 1857 three short stories were published in Blackwood’s Magazine before appearing in book form in 1858 as Scenes of Clerical Life, but these are clerics that would not appear in an Austen novel; however, like Austen, and unlike other writers of the period, Marian Evans depicted her clerics as human beings instead of solely in terms of religion. The second, ‘Mr Gilfil’s Love Story’, Whitley suggests “could actually have been inspired by aspects of Brontë’s own life” and tragic death.

The final link with Austen is speculation, but as speculation it’s attractive. Austen’s novels were published anonymously as simply being ‘by a Lady’, as was common then, it being regarded as indecorous for women to write fiction. This ridiculous attitude persisted after Austen’s death, and in the 1840s the Brontë sisters published their works first under the seemingly masculine names of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell. In 1857 Marian Evans chose George Eliot as her nom de plume.

Why this particular name? Clearly the first name is a nod to George Lewes, her literary mentor, agent and lover, and maybe also to French novelist Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who wrote as George Sand (and whose work Lewes also championed in England). But what about Eliot? Whitley proposes that this was inspired by Anne Elliot in Austen’s Persuasion; Anne, you will remember, was a woman who had a second chance at love when she thought a loving partner might be beyond hope.

Humour
Thus far the observable literary links between three outstanding female authors who straddled the 19th century from the Regency period to the late Victorian era. But Whitney’s goal here is also to re-examine Austen’s and Eliot’s “novels in the context of each other” and this requires the process of comparing and contrasting I mentioned earlier. And not just their works: he looks too at their respective lives, as bluestockings (one the outspoken daughter of a cleric, the other a radical). He considers their complicated love lives, how their writing gave them relative financial independence, and the shift in focus from gentry to tradespeople in their novels.

He also draws conclusions from their fictional characters in chapters entitled ‘The Heroine’s Journey’ and ‘Villains and Victims’ before examining their individual approaches to ending their protagonists’ stories. Finally, he draws attention to how their legacies were ill-served by their early, rather humourless biographers, the relatives or eventual husbands who attempted to whitewash their personal lives to conform to what they thought their reading public might find acceptable.

We know what Brontë thought of at least two of Austen’s novels, but not much of Eliot’s opinion, other than what her fiction implies. And what did Eliot think of Brontë’s novels, if indeed she ever read them? Eliot lists the elements that should be poured into fiction – genuine observation, humour and passion; Austen might be seen to excel in the first two elements, Brontë especially in the latter, but both exhibited all three.

Eliot nails these three colours to her own mast: as she sees it, fiction “like crystalline masses […] may take any form, and yet be beautiful” – one has just to pour the crucial three elements into whatever mould one has decided on.

[Victoria]

Ready and readable— in both its style, as well as its appearance, on a quiet morning at work that induced me to pluck it from the shelf

[Lucy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actual Rating: 4.25/5 stars

[Biddy Hodgkinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love these writers this book will enthrall you
Edward Whitley has done his research & written with insight & knowledge about the parallels - its a terrific read

[Naomi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting in places, but a few issues for me.
linking the two authors through Charlotte bronte felt useful and natural, so, why not compare the three? Charlotte is there at the beginning then forgotten about. There was a lot of repetition of facts throughout the book and it definitely could have been trimmed, in which case - why not add in Charlotte?

I also felt like the author's sections in Jane Austen were longer and written with more indulgence, whereas George Eliot's felt a bit more shoehorned in.

Still, this was an interesting comparison of the two writers and it has inspired me to read more George Eliot!

[Jill Shaw Ruddock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edward Whitely’s Jane Austen and George Eliot is an homage to two literary greats, written with warmth and
intelligence.His admiration is deeply felt on every page.
A eye opener for me. Must read more jane Austen and George Eliot

[Mary Fagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eminently readable book.Such a pity that it contains a number of blatant errors (a couple of which I instance hereunder ) that could have been avoided by more careful editing.
In ‘Emma’ , it was the dinner at Randalls and not the Cole’s party that took place on Christmas Eve.
On more than one occasion the text confuses Charles Austen with Francis Austen. It is stated that ‘Endymion was dispatched to collect supplies from Gibraltar,so Charles Austen missed the Battle of Trafalgar’.While Charles Austen did indeed serve on HMS Endymion,at the time of the Battle of Trafalgar he commanded HMS Indian serving on the North American Station.It was Francis Austen who missed the Battle of Trafalgar .He was Captain of HMS Canopus which was part of Nelson’s fleet. He was ordered to take the ship to fetch provisions for the fleet but by the time he got back,the battle was over.