G.H. Lewes: A Life

by Rosemary Ashton

Spine creased, page edges tanned. Orders received by 3pm Sent from the UK that weekday.

Genres: Biography

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Rosemary Ashton is Emeritus Quain Professor of English Language and Literature and an Honorary Fellow of UCL.

Reviews

[George Ilsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A serious weighty biography of an energetic, amusing, clever, hardworking Victorian writer, philosopher, journalist, critic George Henry Lewes. Lewes was known as an author, arts critic, and for his involvement writing and editing journals and magazines, but his literary accomplishments have been overshadowed by his partnership with George Eliot, the nom de plume of Marian Evans, despite his being married to another woman.

The arrangement was all very civilized, yet was scandalous in Britain. The pain of the scandal was felt most by Miss Evans, at least in the period before her fame as George Eliot, because just as was shown in the novel Anna Karenina, Vronsky was free to mingle in society but his lady-friend was not. That taint of scandal often burdens the woman more than the man.

We sometimes read about literary couples where the man achieves fame, and the wife was the one who made it all possible. Here the situation is reversed: G.H. Lewes helped George Eliot write her famous novels by being a sounding board, by offering emotional support and stability, by acting as her business manager and literary agent, by shielding her from rabid fans and jealous critics. And — most unusually in the literary world — did so without a hint of jealousy or bitterness that her fame outshone his own. Instead, he was unfailingly proud of her and her work, and completely devoted to her.

Between the two of them, Lewes and Eliot spoke many languages and studied everything. They were friends with Dickens and Darwin, corresponded with Charlotte Bronte, hosted Wagner. Perhaps Lewes' most famous work was a biography of Goethe, which was well-received in Britain and in Germany. Lewes was so very productive and his interests so far-ranging that he was dismissed by jealous colleagues as a mere popularizer rather than as someone serious. Snobbishness also factored into that dismissive opinion.

This biography is not an easy or quick read, but the story of this man and the strong-willed woman, his intellectual match who became "George Eliot," is overwhelming, in a good way. Their lives epitomized so much, not just as a bookish literary couple, but also of the sweep of an era — an era of revolutionary ideas and changing values.

Rosemary Ashton has also written two biographies of Eliot: George Eliot: A Life and the short tasty morsel George Eliot, and after a brief pause to recover, I shall wade once again into this strong current; the swirl of rarefied debates in the air, and the eddies of hypocrisy dragging about the ankles.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

G.H. Lewes is probably best known nowadays for being the married man with whom George Eliot lived for years, but he was a fascinating figure in his own right. Rosemary Ashton's biography is, oddly, the only full-length biography of Lewes, though of course he's much discussed in books about Eliot. Lewes was a man of many talents: journalist, novelist, playwright, actor, and scientist. Though he wasn't successful in all of these fields (his novels were regarded as notably bad - I'd love to read one), he was admired for the breadth of his knowledge and interests. His personal life was scandalous, from his open marriage to Agnes Jervis to his long liaison with Eliot, whom he could not marry because by registering Agnes's four children by her lover Thornton Hunt as his own, he had condoned her adultery and thus couldn't divorce her. Ashton's account of his life is scholarly and well-researched, uncovering previously unknown facts about Lewes's life (e.g., that he was illegitimate), and her prose is engaging and readable.