George Eliot in Love

by Brenda Maddox

George Eliot is one of the most celebrated novelists in history. Her books, including Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, and Adam Bede, are as appreciated now as they were in the nineteenth century. Yet her nonconformist and captivating personal life€”a compelling story in itself€”is not well known. Ridiculed as an ugly duckling, Eliot violated strict social codes by living with a married man for most of her adult life. Soon after he died, she married a much younger man who attempted suicide during their honeymoon. The obstacles Eliot overcame in her life informed her work and have made her legacy an enduring one. Brenda Maddox brings her lively style to bear on the intersection of Eliot€™s life and novels. She delves into the human side of this larger-than-life figure, revealing the pleasure and pain behind the intellectual€™s public face. The result is a deeply personal biography that sheds new light on a woman who lived life on her own terms and altere

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Biography Memoir

256 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 2010

About the author

Born in Brockton, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 1932, Brenda Lee Power Murphy graduated from Harvard University (class of 1953) with a degree in English literature and also studied at the London School of Economics. She was a book reviewer for The Observer, The Times, New Statesman, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, and regularly contributed to BBC Radio 4 as a critic and commentator. Her biographies of Elizabeth Taylor, D.H. Lawrence, Nora Joyce, W.B. Yeats, and Rosalind Franklin have been widely acclaimed. She received the Los Angeles Times Biography Award, the Silver PEN Award, the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, and the Whitbread Biography Prize.

Maddox was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1999.

Maddox lived in London and spent time at her cottage near Brecon, Wales, where she and her husband, Sir John Maddox (d. 2009), were actively involved within the local community. She was vice-president of the Hay-on-Wye Festival of Literature, a member of the Editorial Board of British Journalism Review, and a past chairman of the Broadcasting Press Guild. Maddox had two children and two stepchildren.

Her biography of the scientist James Watson was published in 2016.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Jimmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is the immortal description of George Eliot by the young Henry James: "magnificently ugly, deliciously hideous. She has a low forehead, a dull grey eye, a vast pendulous nose, a huge mouth, full of uneven teeth, and a chin and jaw-bone qui n'en finessent pas. . . . Now in this vast ugliness resides a most powerful beauty which, in a very few minutes steals forth and charms the mind so that you end as I ended, in falling in love with her. Yes, behold me literally in love with this great horse-faced blue-stocking."

Moral of the story: You don't have to be beautiful to be sexy.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A full-length review is coming since I received this via BookPleasures.com but a few words until then: this book is sympathetic, well-researched, and paints a clear picture of the woman who brought us great (some would say THE greatest) Victorian novels. She was so insecure that without being encouraged by the love of her life, George Lewes, there might have been no "Middlemarch," arguably one of the greatest novels of that century. She was poor in health but rich in love (by middle age anyway) . . . and book royalties. :)



Drum roll please: Here is the official BookPleasures review:

In this sympathetic biography of the celebrated 19th century novelist, George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans), Brenda Maddox clearly presents the author and the creation of her books, some of English literature’s most unforgettable.

Beginning with her childhood – her rejection by her mother and acceptance by her father – Maddox shows how Evans adopted a fervent Evangelicalism as a young only to lose it when befriended by some freethinking (some of them rather promiscuous) individuals. Promiscuity among 19th century atheistic intellectuals was evidently a reaction to the strict social and religious norms of the day but this opportunity for sexual freedom doesn’t seem to have affected the unattractive Evans in any way but to increase her insecurity: she was yearning for love.

She finally found it when she took up a permanent, live-in relationship with George Lewes (who was technically married to a woman who was, in turn, living with another man). Lewes provided Evans with emotional security and a profound friendship that became a guiding light for her writing career: Lewes suggested that Evans – a talented and successful journalist -- begin to write fiction.

Lewes, as Maddox shows, was not only was the creative impetus for the great Victorian novelist but he also served as her emotional support and protector. For instance, Evans was terrified of reading any reviews of her own work and so Lewes constantly prevented her from seeing any. Even after becoming a wild success, gaining a measure of social acceptance in Victorian England (Evans and Lewes never officially married), and gaining reams of adoring fans, Evans still had difficulty believing in herself as a writer and couldn’t begin – or finish – a new book without suffering from severe depression. With Lewes at her side, however, she was able to ultimately persevere.

Especially riveting for George Eliot fans are the sections of Maddox’s biography which describe the creation of the novels: where Evans found the inspiration for each story’s kernel, where she lived when she wrote each one, and what she – and others -- had to say about them as they came into being (many of them via serialization).

Utilizing reams of personal letters, which bring immediacy to the narrative, Maddox paints an unforgettable portrait of a complex woman -- equal parts talent and insecurity – who because she was so lucky in love, was able to write some of the greatest novels in the English language.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who was George Eliot? What influenced her writing? These were the two questions I asked before I began this biography of the life of one of the most widely respected and most popular authors of the world.

George Eliot kept extensive journals and wrote a plethora of letters, and her husband wrote a biography of her life immediately after her death, allowing him to interview many people who knew her well.

This is a highly readable account of her life.

[Juliet · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book through Goodreads First Reads.

I gave this book the fifty page test and it failed. I'm just going to list out all the things that bothered me, as that's the easiest way to do this.

~~~

1) The tone Maddox uses keeps switching around. One paragraph she's making jokes directly to the reader and the next she's super formal. Since it's non-fiction, it would have been nice for her to pick one tone of narration and stick with it.

2) Many sections are entirely unorganized and go off of tangents. She also feels the need to repeat certain bits of information at length. One example is on page 38:

"He described Mary Ann's as showing a balance of 'the Animal and Moral regions,' with her intellect and moral feelings keeping her 'animal' feelings in check." Skip a paragraph. Maddox then quotes "In the Feelings, the Animal and Moral regions are about equal; the moral being quite sufficient to keep the animal in order..." There's no need for Maddox to quote the exact same passage on two separate occasions.

3) The author feels the need to describe everyone's physical appearance in extreme detail. Mary Anne has a tutor? Lets talk about his hair color and cheek bones! A man publishes her work? Dedicate an entire paragraph to his height! It seemed as though every other man she encountered on the street would be 'the most handsome she'd met in her life'. Not to mention the fact that Maddox feels the need to remind the reader of Mary Anne's ugliness on every other page.

4) There were some sections where extreme author bias permeated every line of text. For instance, Maddox dedicates a large amount of time condemning every one of Mary Anne's acquaintances for not using birth control. However, she never states what Mary Anne's actual opinion on the matter was. Yes, Maddox briefly mentions that Mary Anne talked to others about the idea of population control, but no direct quote from a letter or diary entry is given. It seems, therefore, like Maddox is using Mary Anne's biography as a way to further her own political ideas rather than giving an accurate depiction of what her subject's were.

5) I got this book from free from goodreads, so this isn't a personal complaint. However, if I spent the $25 list price I would have expected a bit more from the edition. In the middle of the text a few pages are dedicated to old pictures of Mary Anne, but they're printed in black and white and on the same paper as the rest of the volume. For $25 I would have expected color pictures and higher quality paper. But this isn't to do with the author, just the publisher cheaping out.

~~~

Not being a scholar on George Eliot, I can't say how well researched the biography is. However, I noticed there is no 'further reading' section or even a reference list, which I find highly suspect. The only thing this book has going for it is that it's easy to read and unintimidating. Therefore, if you're looking for some light reading and aren't bothered by unorganized writing this might be the biography for you. Otherwise, I'd look elsewhere.

[Lizzie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Impulsively picked up a copy of this at The Book Barn about a year ago. Yes, it is silly.

Surprising no one, this isn't a very good book. I chose to read it because it serves the purpose of reading a George Eliot biography with a quickness -- I wanted to get through one and didn't really have time to tackle Karl -- and because I am really interested in the major romantic relationship in George Eliot's life. So, on the off-chance this book was good, or insightful or new, I was curious.

But, it is mostly dull, except for the fact that I think learning about Marian the person (as, almost, a side study of learning about Eliot the author) is always good. The tone of the book is basically set in two unsatisfying lumps: first, Marian is insecure and pathetic, and here's all the men she knew; second, then Marian met Lewes and they traveled here and here and she wrote this and this. And then this happened and then this happened. It's a book report out of an encyclopedia, except without citing any sources almost ever.

As far as the "romance" suggested by the title goes, we are basically treated with a bunch of highly unscientific speculation about who Marian may have lost her virginity to in her twenties. Thanks? That's fine I guess. I'm a little bit intrigued I guess. But give me a shred of something that isn't an eye-roller. Once she and Lewes are together, it is zero of a deduction to interpret that they were lots in love, because they talked about their happiness basically all the time.

The thing I actually disliked about the book, though, is that it paints Marian in a pretty crappy light. I am biased because she's my favorite, yet I'm sure she wasn't a saint, and probably every Victorian of her status and above was something of a pill. Still, all we get here is a picture of how clingy she was, how irrational her insecurities, how much she hung on men, how whipped Lewes was, what an idiot she was falling for guy after guy (though we don't actually know any feelings she didn't write down). She doesn't come off great, and you know that can't be the whole story. And, it's odd, because probably Brenda Maddox would say that she loves George Eliot? I think she just is not a nuanced biographer of her. Or, by being interested only in the superficiality of her personal relationships, managed to remove everything that's interesting about her thoughtfulness.

For alternative reading, the Eliot & Lewes section in Parallel Lives is only 40 pages long, but is 100x better than this whole book on the same topic. I reread it after finishing this, and still loved it.

It's a 2½, but I'm three-starring this one because it wasn't very ridiculous or offensive or inaccurate, and I learned some new things that were in fact useful to me. I wouldn't recommend it either as reading or as scholarship, though.

[Oldroses · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many years ago when I first became aware of George Eliot as a Victorian woman who openly lived with a man without benefit of marriage, I eagerly sought out her novels thinking they would be as scandalous as her life. Imagine my disappointment upon discovering that the books were conventional Victorian novels, no different from the books of Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope or Henry James, all of whom she knew and with whom she socialized.

The mystery of how a woman who flouted Victorian conventions while writing stories observing those conventions has finally been solved for me by Brenda Maddox’s excellent biography, "George Eliot in Love". This small volume, which the author calls a “…short life of the great Victorian author….”is a sympathetic treatment of Eliot’s life and career.

It is in some ways, a typical Victorian love story. A woman, Mary Anne Evans, too ugly for marriage has several brief love affairs before finally finding a man, George Henry Lewes, who can ignore her looks and love her for herself. But there the story becomes more modern. They are unable to marry because he is already married and has acknowledged his wife’s children by her lover as his own thereby depriving himself of grounds for divorce. Nevertheless, George and Mary Anne live as man and wife, she taking his name.

She had been a journalist and editor but with his encouragement, turned to writing novels using the pseudonym George Eliot. He nurtured her talent, shielded her from critical reviews and managed all of her business affairs. Her fame grew and people began to “forget” that she was not married to the man she was living with. Their love also grew. This book is as much a love story as a biography.

Unlike most modern biographies, this one does not dwell on its subject’s flaws. The author mentions the possible physical relationships Eliot had before meeting Lewes, but doesn’t speculate. She also mentions but dismisses rumors that Lewes was unfaithful to Eliot. She doesn’t make a big deal of Eliot’s marriage after Lewes’ death to a much younger man. There is no titillation here, only the story of two soulmates who defied society to be together.

Having gained a better understanding of George Eliot as a person as well as an author, I am keen to re-read her novels.

[Linda K · Rating 3 out of 5]

In today's culture, a woman author living with a married man would be hardly noticed. In 1850s' England, however, it was scandalous. Mary Ann Evans became the author George Eliot under the encouragement and guidance of her soulmate Henry George Lewes and lived with him for 25 years. Their love and devotion was perfectly matched in one another, although he had a wife and children. His wife, Agnes, bore children with someone else. It is the stuff of a good soap opera.

Most women writers of that time wrote under an assumed name to allow their work to be more widely accepted. Mary Ann Evans wrote a number of books, many of which have become classics. Her lengthy novel, Middlemarch is an almost perfect vision of English small town life. Mill on the Floss and Daniel Deronda are others. She researched extensively, as it shows in the accuracy and detail in her writings.

Although afflicted with ill health throughout her life, she continued to write until the death of her love, Mr. Lewes. She then married a man 20 years her junior, but died less than a year later.
This is a interesting look into a life quite out of the norm for the times.

[Deborah Siddoway · Rating 3 out of 5]

An adequate entry level biography on the life of a remarkable woman, which is less than helpful for more advanced study due to a lack of referencing, and, in some cases, adequate explanation for the rationale underlying some of the author's assertions about Eliot's thoughts, beliefs, or intentions.

Still it is very readable, but not if you are looking for a biography with more critical deconstruction of Eliot's views on marriage and love.

[Debra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very ‘readable’ and interesting biography; without going into too much detail, you will gain a good sense of George Eliot (aka Marian Evans) life and loves. When you compare her life to the Bronte sisters, it’s very fascinating to ponder, but easy to see, why and how their writings took such different turns. Brilliance either way.

[Colleen Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as a first-read from goodreads.com.

When I first requested this book on goodreads I thought it was a novel. When I received it and realized it was nonfiction I was worried I wouldn't like it as other nonfiction books based on the lives of authors (such as Becoming Jane about Jane Austen) I had trouble even finishing. They were dry and seemed to stick only to the facts which, while important for the type of work they were, did not stimulate my interest. This, in contrast, was very good! It read like a novel and was full of anecdotes that added to the joy of reading about the life of a woman that so many of us have heard of and even read but that we don't know much about her personal life (or at least this was my experience). She truly was a fascinating woman that seemed to go against the grain of contemporary standards on just about every level. She was widely considered to be ugly but highly intelligent and kind, she lived for 25 years with a married man as if they were actually married and she made an exorbinant amount of money in a time when many women did not seem to work outside the home. She was also very outspoken and highly learned in her nontraditional views of religion and science. Even with all of these forays away from the norm, she arose one of the most beloved and read contemporary novelists of her time. I am incredibly surprised there has not been more fiction written about her because her life is truly fascinating. a definite must read for biography lovers!

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is much to love in this little book. There is a love story that escapes the strictures of the Victorian times. George Eliot (Marian Evans is one of her many names) lived many years with George Henry Lewes who already had a wife and children. There are insights into her novels, Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch. The writing process for George Eliot was often torture, beginning with depression and ending with feelings of insecurity. When she was born with her father’s coarse features, a large nose and a man’s chin, even her father knew that it would be difficult for her to find a suitor when she grew up. He invested in education for her and that education and her own gentle intelligence later made her one of the most loved and best writers of England. I feel that Brenda Maddox wrote this biography with love. It would have been easy to be critical with George Eliot’s decisions and fill the book with some of the nasty things written about her but instead she tried to be fair to the writer. In the middle of the book, there enough paintings and one photo to give readers a clear picture of what George Eliot lived with every day of her life. This book is richly detailed and actually a slow read but an enjoyable one. The strange thing is that I had the distinct feeling of intruding into her personal life, something that she and George Lewes protected furiously while living. I would recommend it to anyone who has reads George Eliot’s writings. I won this book in a Good Reads Conteszt.

[Gwen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps it is because I don't often read biographies, but I didn't particularly care for the subject matter. It was well written by Brenda Maddox, but Marian, Mary Ann, Marrianne, or George, did not lead a particularly exciting life and she and her chosen "significant other" seemed to be sick most of the time. I have never read one of her books and the only one I had even heard of was Silas Marner, have lead a sheltered life? I may also have been influenced by the fact that she was said to be an agnostic. I felt better about reading about her when she was reported to have said that she liked the "feeling" that she got inside when attending church services, I believe it was at holiday.

I was a little confused by the pictures in the center of the book. Maddox wrote of Eliot's father being Robert Evans and her brother being Isaac Evans, the pictures have the names reversed.

It is sad that she was frequently said to be "ugly". Why are we so cruel to each other that is even a factor? This could be part of the reason she became an agnostic. I feel fortunate that I was not of that time and place. Perhaps someday when I have read all the books that I want to read, I will pick up one of Eliot's novels and see, but at the moment I can't help but think that her sadness and melancholy would show up in her writing....how dreary.

[Catherine Siemann · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't fault this book in the truth-in-advertising department: it focuses on Eliot's love life, to a degree that her intellectual and artistic achievements seem more like backdrop. There are some not-particularly-well-supported assumptions about her early sexuality, and generally not enough depth in exploring her character and ideas. We're told rather than shown how fascinating she was. Fine as an introduction; fantastic if it raises interest in reading her fiction; but there are numerous full-length biographies that give the subject her due. This is not one of them.

I received this book through the Librarything Early Reviews Program.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've always loved her books, so I was very interested to learn more about the author. I was thrilled when winning this book gave me that chance. GE was a women well ahead of her time. While the author did a great job on this biography, I found myself wishing GE had written her own autobiography. I would love to hear about her life in her own words. However, she probably would have vastly underplayed her strengths, so perhaps this is for the best. A shame so many of her personal letters were lost or destryed. This is a great read for anyone who loves George Eliot or who loves period pieces.

[Siegrist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Apparently in a library somewhere George Eliot's 14 year old essays survive! I loved the excerpts from letters in this book. An easy to read synthesis of the writers life, it seemed a little disconnected from its subject. I found the banging on about her purported unattractiveness a little tiresome. I would have liked more sense of Eliots interior life - her intellect and emotions. Neverthess for fans an interesting read. I've come away with a hankering to reread the novels.

[Lily · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I adore George Eliot and am intrigued by her life and times I was unable to finish reading this. Maddox's takes what is a real-life drama of societal scandal, adultery, true love and of the course the accompanying heartache and bleeds it of any sentiment or passion. Her writing is lifeless and leaves for tedious reading. A truly disappointing find.

[Amanda J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maddox delivers a very readable biography of novelist George Eliot, a woman who refused to live up to society's rules and expectations.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a totally fun book to read. She had an interesting life. I recommend this for anyone who likes biography (George Eliot didn't.)

[Molly]

Won in a First Reads giveaway.

[Diana]

Interesting and insightful. Full of little details that makes her life and loves interesting.