Showing results by author "George Eliot" in All Categories

The weaver Silas Marner is a member of a small Calvinist congregation in Lantern Yard, a slum street in an unnamed city in Northern England in the early 19th century. He is falsely accused of stealing the congregation's funds, leaves the city in disgrace, and accumulates a small fortune in another town…only to lose it to theft. But he soon adopts an orphan child quite by accident. The exchange of one treasure for another is the heart of the story.

In a hole under the floorboards Silas Marner the linen-weaver keeps his gold. Every day he works hard at his weaving, and every night he takes the gold out and holds the bright coins lovingly, feeling them and counting them again and again. The villagers are afraid of him and he has no family, no friends. Only the gold is his friend, his delight, his reason for living. But what if a thief should come in the night and take his gold away?

First published in 1861 it tells the tale of the lonely weaver Silas Marner who, after suffering betrayal and rejection, leaves his community to become a recluse obsessed only with accumulating money. One day Silas's money is stolen by Dunstan Cass, a dissolute son of Squire Cass, the town's leading landowner. The loss of his gold drives Silas into a deep gloom, until one day a little golden-haired orphan girl wanders into his home to change his life forever.

A sparkling collection of short stories by leading female authors including “Miss Brill” by Katharine Mansfield, “The Lifted Veil” by George Eliot and “A Venetian Night's Entertainment” by Edith Wharton.

Élevée au moulin de Dorlcote, dans les paysages verdoyants du Lincolnshire, la toute jeune et idéaliste Maggie Tulliver forme avec son frère Tom un couple lié par un amour indestructible. Ce lien est pourtant mis à mal après la mort de leur père, que la faillite a contraint à vendre son moulin. Maggie se morfond dans sa nouvelle vie et se rapproche un peu plus de Philip Wakem, un jeune homme sensible et cultivé, issu d'une famille rivale. Au grand dam de Tom, qui a dû abandonner ses études pour subvenir aux besoins des siens, au prix d'un labeur acharné...

George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans – an ironic ‘deception’ given that "Adam Bede", her first novel, is written unashamedly from a feminist standpoint. The story centres on a pastoral love triangle. Two young men, carpenter Adam Bede and squire Captain Arthur Donnithorne, are both in love with the mercurial Hetty Sorrel. There’s a further love interest between Adam and beautiful lay preacher Dinah Morris. The setting is a country village in the north of England in the last years of the eighteenth century.

George Eliot’s 1859 novella, "The Lifted Veil", departs radically from the grounded realism of her longer and better known works, such as "Middlemarch" and "Daniel Deronda". Its tone calls to mind the works of middlebrow Sensationists, like Wilkie Collins ("The Moonstone"), and of some of the better known authors of Victorian era horror writings, such as Bram Stoker ("Dracula") and Mary Shelley ("Frankenstein"). Eliot here explores mystical themes, considering the world of phenomena which are felt but not seen.

Reputed as Eliot’s favourite novel "Silas Marner" is set in the early years of the 19th century. Marner, a weaver, is a member of a small congregation in Lantern Yard. Falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit, he leaves his home and lives a solitary life near the village of Raveloe. Dedicating his life to weaving and hoarding gold for the next fifteen years, circumstances beyond his control shape his destiny and help to restore his faith in humanity.

"Impressions of Theophrastus Such" is a work of fiction by George Eliot, first published in 1879. It was Eliot's last published writing and her most experimental, taking the form of a series of literary essays by an imaginary minor scholar whose eccentric character is revealed through his work.

"The Mill on the Floss" is George Eliot’s second novel, and was published in 1860, only a year after her first, "Adam Bede". It centres on the lives of brother and sister Tom and Maggie Tulliver growing up on the river Floss near the town of St. Oggs (a fictionalised version of Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, England) in the years following the Napoleonic Wars, with both as young adults eventually meeting a tragic end by the Mill which the family holds so dear.

Among the many fatalities attending the bloom of young desire, that of blindly taking to the confectionery line has not, perhaps, been sufficiently considered. How is the son of a British yeoman, who has been fed principally on salt pork and yeast dumplings, to know that there is satiety for the human stomach even in a paradise of glass jars full of sugared almonds and pink lozenges, and that the tedium of life can reach a pitch where plum-buns at discretion cease to offer the slightest excitement.

Falsely accused of a crime and betrayed by his closest friend, the weaver Silas Marner has been hoarding his earnings for 15 years. Distanced from his religious community, he has devoted himself to his work and taken pleasure only in counting his coins. Then in a single day, his gold is stolen and a lovely child appears on his doorstep. As he changes his life to meet the irresistible needs of the child, Marner accepts that the loss of the gold was a necessary exchange for the child.

Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, later Marian Evans. It is her seventh novel, begun in 1869 and then put aside during the final illness of Thornton Lewes, the son of her companion George Henry Lewes. During the following year Eliot resumed work, fusing together several stories into a coherent whole, and during 1871–72 the novel appeared in serial form. The first one-volume edition was published in 1874, and attracted large sales. Subtitled "A Study of Provincial Life," the novel is set in the fictitious Midlands town of ...

The tale of a man who is incapacitated by visions of the future and the cacophony of overheard thoughts, and yet who can't help trying to subvert his vividly glimpsed destiny, it is easy to understand The Lifted Veil as being autobiographically revealing of Eliot's sensitivity to public opinion and her awareness that her days concealed behind a pseudonym were doomed to a tragic unveiling (as indeed came to pass soon after this novella's publication). 

A commentary on guilt, material wealth, community, religion, and more, this novel is a thought provoking yet heartwarming tale. Banished from his church after being falsely accused of theft, Silas Marner becomes a bitter hermit consumed only by the wealth and goods he has been able to attain in exile. After losing everything he loved from his past, he clings now to the materials he has gained since. However, he must suffer through losing those too and instead gain the love of an innocent orphan to find the redemption he didn’t know he needed.

Mary Anne Evans was born on 22nd November 1819, at Nuneaton in Warwickshire, England. Her first major literary work was completing an English translation of Strauss's ‘The Life of Jesus’ in 1846. Under the pseudonym of George Eliot that we know so well, ‘Adam Bede’ was published in 1859, followed by her other great novels: ‘Mill on the Floss’, ‘Silas Marner’ and ‘Middlemarch’. ‘The Lifted Veil’ is a both a beautiful story and typical of Eliot’s formidable powers of writing.

Here, Eliot explores ethical problems inherent in certain strands and styles of Christian evangelical teaching—particularly as displayed in the writings of one Dr. Cumming. While Eliot’s critique is focused on the work of this particular preacher, her insights are enduringly pertinent for those interested in the politics and ethics of religious discourse today. As always, Eliot’s authorial voice is abounding in pathos and concern for contexts of human relationality.

Latimer is convinced that he has a special power. According to him, he can see into the future and he can also read people's mind. Actually everybody’s but one; his brother’s wife Bertha's mind remains closed to him. Although he marries her after his brother’s death, he still cannot manage to read her thoughts. What he realizes however is that Bertha is manipulative and her heart is not pure.

This powerful and moving 1860 novel is believed to be George Eliot’s most autobiographical novel. She was certainly referencing personal experience when she wrote the character of Maggie Tulliver.