Comparative Literature Commons^™

Annual Report 2001, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Looking back thirty years to my report for 1971 I found that I had written 'It is most rewarding to be able to report a successful and stimulating year'. Thirty years later I can say the same - despite having drawn in our horns after the less than successful Millennium year.

At the Annual General Meeting in March we thought we were to lose our new treasurer, Sophie Pavier, but she found she was able to continue for a further year, much to our relief. Ted Bates retired from the Council after many years' service owing to ill health. I …

Review Of Such Silver Currents: The Story Of William And Lucy Clifford, M. Chisholm

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is the first biography to record the shared and separate lives of an unusual couple, a mathematical genius called William Clifford and his literary wife, Lucy. Their biographer, M. Chisholm, has had to confront the problem of different lives and interests since the Cliffords shared only four years of marriage, but she has arranged a considerable amount of research sensibly, showing where their concerns diverged and coincided. During their time in London (1875-9) the Cliffords were at the centre of a fascinating group of celebrities, literary and scientific, who were drawn to their Sunday afternoon salons. We are likely …

Review Of Rereading Victorian Fiction; Rethinking Victorian Culture, Alice Jenkins, Juliet John

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

These two fine volumes have their roots in a Victorian literature conference at the University of Liverpool in 1996, which I had the good fortune to attend. At the time, I remember being struck in particular by the erudition of a number of the papers presented and by the impressive range of material covered in eclectic ways. It is extremely pleasing to see many of the best papers from the conference expanded in these two volumes, pleasing not least because these two collections offer an extremely good snapshot representing the diverse richness and buoyant state of Victorian Studies at the …

Review Of Adam Bede, Carol A. Martin

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In a letter to G. H. Lewes of October 1858 John Blackwood contrasted his own discriminating language of praise with the 'abandon of expression' indulged in by what he terms 'the large hearted school of Critics,' and of course one sees his point, as Lewes did with feeling concurrence: 'largehearted critics - an awful Race’. But I do not see how one can avoid joining the scorned 'large hearted'. I am at a loss to know how to write anything that could be called a 'review' of so fine a piece of work as this latest volume in the Clarendon …

George Eliot Birthday Lucheon, 25 November 2001 The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Canon Edward Pogmore

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I would like to thank you for inviting Jane and me to the wreath-laying and to this luncheon and the opportunity to propose the toast to the immortal memory of George Eliot.

It is over a year ago that I was walking through the corridors of Leeds University School of Healthcare Studies when I saw an advertisement for a lecture by Dr Jane Wood of the School of English - and the title of the lecture was "'Webs, Tissues and Predisposing Causes": George Eliot and Medical Science' (Yorkshire Medicine, Volume 12, No. 4, 105-109).

It is not the catchiest …

George Eliot's Debt To Hardy?, David Mcintosh

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In his biography of Thomas Hardy, Michael Millgate makes the following assertion:

The irritating association of Hardy's work with George Eliot's was kept alive in the summer of 1876 by the appearance of Daniel Deronda and the comment in the Westminster Review that it was fortunate that The Hand of Ethelberta had been published first, 'or else ill-natured critics would have declared that his principal character was only a copy'. To such a criticism, had it in fact been made, Hardy might justifiably have pointed out that George Eliot had, in that same novel, borrowed from Far From the Madding …

Mines Of Misinformation: George Eliot And Old Master Paintings: Berlin, Munich, Vienna And Dresden, 1854-5 And 1858, Leonee Ormond

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This article is a 'footnote' to two classic works on George Eliot: Hugh Witemeyer's George Eliot and the Visual Arts and The Journals of George Eliot, edited by Margaret Harris and Judith Johnston. When I began to follow the progress of George Eliot and George Henry Lewes round the major art galleries of Western Europe, I soon discovered that many of the paintings which George Eliot mentions in her journal were not what she believed them to be. Some have been reattributed since her lifetime, and others, while still bearing the name of the artist she gave them, were …

The Thirtieth George Eliot Annual Memorial Lecture, 2001; George Eliot- The Woman And The Writer, Rosalind Miles

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is a great honour to be invited to deliver this civic address today in the presence of the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of Nuneaton, and I am delighted to be here among you in George Eliot's home town. My chosen theme on this special anniversary is George Eliot, the Woman and the Writer, and I intend to address a number of questions related to George Eliot's life and art, including what I hope may be some of the less familiar aspects of her early days. But before I do, I hope you will forgive a personal note.

As …

A George Eliot Quatation On A Public Occasion, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

At the funeral of the Queen Mother in Westminster Abbey on 9 April 2002 the Archbishop of Canterbury delivered the sermon and, in describing her life, used these words - 'There was about her, in George Eliot's lovely phrase, "the sweet presence of a good diffused"‘.

These words are taken from the last part of George Eliot's poem, 'O May I Join the Choir Invisible', in which she describes her own feelings on immortality:

Japanese Branch Report 2001, Fumiko Nishiyama

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The fifth annual convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Tokai University in Kanagawa on Saturday, I December 2001. The morning session began with a welcome speech by Kyoichi Ono, Chief of the Foreign Language Center of Tokai University. He said that George Eliot and Shigeyoshi Matsumae, the founder of Tokai University, had some similarities: both of them lived through a turbulent age; both sustained an interest in religion and humanity; both had insight into the significance of modem civilization.

The first paper was presented by Tomoko Kanda, an assistant at Nihon University. She analysed 'The …

Editor's Notes

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

We wish to correct the following typographical errors that occurred in June Skye Szirotny's 'Edward Casaubon and Herbert Spencer' (George Eliot Review No. 32 [2001], pp. 29-43):

We wish to correct the following typographical errors that occurred in June Skye Szirotny's'Edward Casaubon and Herbert Spencer' (George Eliot Review No. 32 [2001], pp. 29-43):p. 31 , I. 31 after ). insert [sic 1p. 34, I. 11 for our read ourp. 35, I. 6 after 223). insert note 39a. See also n. 33 above.p. 36, I. 8 for L read GELI. 20 for L read GELp. 38, I. 5 for University read …

Shakespearean Deference To Female Virgin Power, Phyllis Nichols

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

This project concerns the ways in which Shakespearean literature becomes translated into political theory. T considers the way Shakespeare captures characteristics of Queen Elizabeth I-portraying her as the era's political icon through his plays. He shows her deference by immortalizing her legacy with strong women characters while limiting them to a level of power beneath her. Using The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and Othello, the Moor of Venice -plays juxtaposing elements of gender, race, and orthodoxy - the paper shows behavioral patterns linking the plays' patriarchs to King Henry VIII. Shylock, Prospero, and Brabantio each operate in the role …

Figure, Image, And The Shape Of Time In Shakespeare's History Plays, Susan Walker

Inquiry: The University of Arkansas Undergraduate Research Journal

Shakespeare began his career as a dramatist by writing the first of a series of plays remarking upon English history from the Middle Ages through the reign of Henry VIII. Most notable of this historic chronicle are the eight plays, or two tetralogies, that dramatize the tumultuous period of civil conflict between 1399 and 1485. Some critics of Shakespeare's tetralogies have argued Shakespeare's intent to produce a single, unified, and providentially-ordered chronicle in which the deposition of Richard II may be viewed as the nascent event for the civil wars that culminated in Tudor accession to the crown. Nevertheless, more …

Review Of Oxford Reader's Companion To George Eliot, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

For a reader of George Eliot, opening this Companion may be a bit like opening a box of chocolates. There is a pause as one wonders where to begin, but once begun, it is difficult to stop tasting and savouring the contents. The articles are written in a fluid and concise, easily readable style, and present such an abundance and particularity of detail that the most dedicated student of George Eliot's life and work will find new information and insights. And even where the facts are more or less familiar, details we may have forgotten remind us again of the …

Priest And Nun?: Daniel Deronda, Anti-Catholicism And The Confessional, Kirstie Blair

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In Chapter 32 of Daniel Deronda, Sir Hugo Mallinger jocularly remarks to Deronda, 'You are always looking tenderly at the women, and talking to them in a Jesuitical way. You are a dangerous young fellow'.' Deronda responds with undue irritation, drawing the narrative observation that, 'Sir Hugo's notion of flirting, it was to be hoped, was rather peculiar'. Both Deronda's defensive reaction and Eliot's sly comment hint at the potential dangers of 'peculiar' flirtation with Gwendolen, a peculiarity linked to the term 'Jesuitical'. In the pervasive late Victorian discourse of anti-Catholicism, Jesuit priests are associated with insinuation, deception, persuasion, and …

Opening Of The Garden At The George Eliot Hospital Nuneaton, 9 July 2000, Serena Evans

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When I was asked to come here to open this lovely garden I wondered what on earth I could say about George Eliot that you hadn't thought, read, written or said already - and then I decided that I should talk about the one thing that you don't know about, and that is what has meant to be George Eliot's great- great- great-niece.

It wasn't a thing I questioned when I was little, it just was; at home the book shelves were full of leather bound volumes of her novels and the downstairs loo had pictures on the wall of …

Middlemarch And Belinda, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Middlemarch and Rhoda Broughton's Belinda (1883) have often been cited as benchmarks in the much wider debate concerning Mark Pattison and his wife Emily Francis, later Lady Dilke. Among other novels with alleged Pattison derivations are W. H. Mallock's The New Republic (1877), Mrs. Humphry Ward's Robert Elsmere (1888), and Robert Liddell's The Almond Tree (1938), the latter apparently deftly drawn from the Pattison papers in the Bodleian. Apologists occupying the Pattison patch include John Sparrow and Vivian Green,’ while Pattison's own Memoirs (1885) are essential to any understanding of this alternately admired and vilified man. In his George Eliot: …

Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative In Darwin, George Eliot, And Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Gillian Beer

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In Darwin s Plots, Gillian Beer writes that 'On the Origin of Species is one of the most extraordinary examples of a work which included more than the maker of it at the time knew, despite all that he did know'. Published in November 1859 with a print run of 1,250, Origin shook Victorian Britain. Its conclusions seemed inescapable. Life on earth was not the six-day product of a divine creator, but the outcome of random evolutionary process. Its impact was immediate and immense. Man 'was born yesterday - he will perish tomorrow' declared the Athenaeum. In later life Thomas …

Address At The Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Garden, Nuneaton 18 June 2000

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

To be asked to lay a wreath and say a few words in celebration of George Eliot, the great authoress, is an honour, I am sure that most of you here today have much more knowledge and understanding of her life and works than I do, but having spent my childhood at Arbury and living there now with my wife and children, I believe that I have a small bond.

It is astounding to think that she, who is so much a part of the fabric of Arbury, is a world famous figure. Her talent was acknowledged during her lifetime …

Edward Casaubon And Herbert Spencer, June Skye Szirotny

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Identifying the originals of George Eliot's characters has always fascinated readers. And none of her characters has inspired speculation about an original more than Edward Casaubon, George Eliot's scholar and clergyman in Middlemarch. In 1973, Richard Ellmann published an essay, 'Dorothea's Husbands: Some Biographical Speculations' ,re-examining the claims made for various persons George Eliot had known, as the original of Casaubon: Mark Pattison, Herbert Spencer, Dr. Robert Herbert Brabant, Jacob Bryant, Robert William Mackay, and George Eliot herself. Since then readers have focused on other contenders, mostly literary figures. 2 Of the traditional contenders, Mark Pattison, a scholar who wrote …

Address Wreath-Laying In Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey 21 June 2000, Jonathan G. Ouvry

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When Gabriel Woolf was standing here a few years ago, he told us the various things that he was not, in relation to George Eliot; for example, that he was not an author fresh from the triumph of the latest biography or other learned work, or an academic (though there I think he does himself an injustice). I too am not any of the things which very often distinguish the wreath laying guest on this important occasion in the George Eliot Fellowship's calendar. Among the many things which I am not, is any kind of blood relation of George Eliot. …

American Branch Report, Linda K. Roberston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Dr. Linda K. Robertson reports that a small group of members and friends met for dinner in St. Louis, Missouri in November and it is hoped this might become a regular event. Vast distances preclude members in the USA meeting as a branch but there are at present 33 annual members there and 49 life members. One of the latter, George Griffith delivered a paper on 'George Eliot’s Photographed Face and the Gaze of Public Celebrity' at the conference of Victorian Interdisciplinary Studies Association of the Western United States in October. The parent Fellowship in England would welcome news of …

Review Of A Community Of Interest- The Story Of The George Eliot Fellowship 1930-2000, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On November 22nd 1930 an inaugural supper for the George Eliot Fellowship was held at the Newdegate Arms in Nuneaton, at which Sir Francis Newdegate GCMG of Arbury Hall presided. He told the assembled company that it was high time that those who lived Nuneaton should pay every honour they could to George Eliot. He went on to say 'I cannot myself speak of her writings as an expert, but I do know that she has done a great deal for the neighbourhood in the way she has reproduced Warwickshire as it was 100 years ago and has preserved the …

Nobody's Daughters: Dicken's Tattycoram And George Eliot's Caterina Sarti, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Doughty Street, where Dickens lived for three years (1836-9), is within a stone's throw of the site of London's Hospital for Foundling Children, which was established in 1739 by the retired sea-captain, Thomas Coram, whom Dickens venerated. Tavistock House - Dickens's home 1851-60, and where he wrote Little Dorrit, the novel in which Tattycoram appears - was also only a short walk from the Hospital.

Dickens entirely approved of the way the 'Foundling' was managed in his own day. The Household Words article 'Received, a Blank Child’,' which he co-authored with his sub-editor, W. H. Wills, unreservedly praises the establishment's …

Review Of Scenes Of Sympathy: Identity And Representation In Victorian Fiction "Without Any Check Of Proud Reserve": Sympathy And Its Limits In George Eliot's Novels, Audrey Jaffe, Ellen Argyros

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

These two books, when read together, make an exceedingly interesting comparative study of 'sympathy', that term so pervasive in George Eliot's work. Audrey Jaffe's book resituates the idea of 'sympathy' in the Foucauldian notions of spectacularization and surveillance, thus examining sympathy from a cultural studies perspective. She comments that her book is 'not an attempt to define sympathy per se ... this book rather exposes and explores the recurrent connection between sympathy, representation, and constructions of social identity in a series of Victorian texts' (8). Jaffe thus brings an entirely new perspective to bear on what critics and readers - …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 19 November 2000 The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Now I am in my thirty-second year as Secretary of the Fellowship, Bill and I can look back over those years and realize what an immense change they have made to our lives. When we joined the tiny Fellowship in 1965 we could have had no idea what was in store for us - the interesting things that have happened to us, the lovely people (some of them quite famous!) we have met, the friends we have made and the places we have been to, all because of that wonderful lady we are celebrating today.

My first contact with George …

Letter To The Editor, 2001, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The welcome purchase by the British Library of George Eliot / Jane Senior letters isn't always reported accurately. In a recent Woman's Hour Kathryn Hughes seemed to imply the correspondence was new to scholars. Haight's Yale Edition contains ten letters from George Eliot to Jane Senior, including three of the series in the news. The unpublished letters extend and stimulate existing knowledge. We shall discuss this and other subjects at a two-day symposium to be held at the University of London Institute of English Studies on 17-18 January 2002.

Annual Report 2000, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

2000, the Millennium Year, proved to be a mixture of success and some disappointment. The Fellowship Council planned many extra events for so auspicious a year; some were very successful, others were not. Indeed, many of us felt that the excitement of the Millennium had faded by the end of January!

The year began for us with the sad news of the death of our Patron, Viscount Daventry. Several members attended his funeral service at Astley ('Knebley') Church and we were also represented at the Memorial Service later in St Mary's Church in Warwick. Viscount Daventry had been our Patron …

The Twenty-Ninth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2000 "George Eliot For The Twenty-First Century: Middlemarch And The Poetry Of Prosaic Conditions", Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Jerome Beaty should have given this lecture: 1 I have spoken and written in celebration of his scholarship and record that I was sad to be speaker not listener. Taking his amusingly grandiose title I place mine after it, and discussing Middlemarch and its poetry of (and in) prosaic conditions, respect his theme. I consider George Eliot's poetic language in Middlemarch at a time when many poets and novelists are interested in generic crossing and dislocation (as they have been in different ways from modernism to post-modernism) but when critics are less concerned with George Eliot's art, and literary art …

Review Of George Eliot And Victorian Historiography: Imagining The National Past, Memory And History In George Eliot: Transfiguring The Past, Neil Mccaw, Hao Li

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Two recent books address the important subject of how and why George Eliot represents history in her fiction. Neil McCaw's George Eliot and Victorian Historiography is concerned primarily with Eliot's relationship to Victorian history writing - to the historians, theories and ideologies that shaped the way Victorians understood and reconstructed an English national past. Hao Li's Memory and History in George Eliot aims to understand Eliot's conception of the 'mechanisms and functions' of 'communal memory' in relation to history. Li draws on Victorian physiological and psychological theories of memory, as well as on twentieth-century thinking about the relationship between memory …