Comparative Literature Commons^™

Women Musicians In Victorian Fiction, 1860-1900: Representations Of Music, Science, And Gender In The Leisured Home, Phyllis Weliver

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The title and subtitle of this book must intrigue anybody who ·takes an interest in the cultural background of nineteenth-century literature. The familiarly stereotypical figures of the 'accomplished' Victorian girl at her piano, the evolutionary scientist and the domestic hearth where they might meet have often been analysed - and questioned. In fact, Phyllis Weliver's chapter on sensation fictions shows the seductive, female demon lurking behind the deceptively correct musical performances of two 'fallen' heroines. In East Lynne, the protagonist, who is to abandon her husband and children to live abroad in shame, starts out playing hymns, and Lady Audley …

The George Eliot Review: Journal Of The George Eliot Fellowship 2001 No. 32, Beryl Gray, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors ........................................................................ 5

ADDRESSES Viscount Daventry: Address at the wreath-laying in the George Eliot Memorial Gardens, 18 June 2000 ................................................ 7

Jonathan Ouvry: Address at the wreath-laying in Westminster Abbey, 21 June 2000 ........................................................................... 9

Serena Evans: Address at the opening of a garden at the George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton, 9 July 2000 .................................................. .11

Barbara Hardy: The Twenty-Ninth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 21 October 2000...................... 13

Kathleen Adams: The Toast to the Immortal Memory: George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 19 November 2000 .......................................... 23

ARTICLES June Skye Szirotny: Edward Casaubon and Herbert Spencer (Prize Essay) ..............................29 …

Japanese Branch Report 2000, Yukiko Ono

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The fourth annual convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Kinki University in Osaka on Saturday, 25 November 2000.

The morning session began with a welcome speech by Norio Murase, Dean of the Literature Department of Kinki University. He said, 'George Eliot seems to be similar to Nukada-noookimi, a famous poet of Mayoshu, the oldest collected Japanese verses, in the seventh century, not in appearance, but in abundance of feeling.'

The first paper, 'Clothing in Janet's Repentance', was presented by Masae Ukawa, a full-time lecturer at Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts. She observed the …

Review Of Women Of The Press In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Barbara Onslow

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'Everything in the literary world is done by favour and connections'. Mary Howitt's assessment of the importance of contacts in the London of the 1840s is borne out in Barbara Onslow's wide ranging and fascinating study of nineteenth century women journalists. 'Journalism was an open profession', as she observes, 'but it was a masculine one' and women who sought access to it relied on a variety of networks. Her book is, indirectly, a superb study of female networking. Family connections helped women like Mary Howitt, Anna Maria Hall, Isabella Beeton and Alice Meynell, each of whom teamed up with her …

Japanese Branch Report 1999, Kyoko Kishimoto

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The third annual convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at the beautiful Bunka Women's University in Musashino, Tokyo, on Saturday, 27 November 1999. On the rather cold day with eighty-seven active participants, the morning session began with a welcome speech by Yoko Yanagi, Dean of the Literature Department of Bunka Women's University. Among the three papers, the first was 'Eppie's Innocent Challenge in Si/as Mamer' by a graduate student at Edinburgh University, Yuko Nakamura. She thought that Eppie, as an eighteen-year-old woman, challenged mid-Victorian ideology with her marriage by rejecting that system of patriarchy and class …

Review Of The Letters Of George Henry Lewes, Vol. Iii, With New George Eliot Letters

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This helpful, clearly edited supplement to the original two-volume Letters of George Henry Lewes, which appeared in 1995, actually contains more letters by George Eliot than from Lewes: 79 by her and 54 by him, of which 92 (47 by him and 45 by her) are published for the first time. As William Baker says in his introduction, the letters cover each phase of their lives: her work with the Westminster Review, his with the Leader, their meeting and life together, his death and its devastating impact upon her. There are no dramatic discoveries, but the thirteen letters Lewes wrote …

"The Woman At The Window", Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Dear Editors

May I write a postscript to Terence R. Wright's review of Perspectives on Self and Community in George Eliot: Dorothea's Window in your last number? He says I 'come down strongly on lesser critics who make the mistake of locating Dorothea's vision ... in Chapter 80 ... in the boudoir rather than the marital bedroom', but I meant to include myself amongst misinterprets, in writing 'When I first read the novel I made this mistake'.

Review Of George Eliot's Middlemarch: A Guide For Students And Readers Of The Novel, Josie Billington

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Among certain readers of this review, those already equipped with personal computers capable of launching Cruise missiles at the twitch of a mouse, my opening paragraph will, if anything, pucker lips. But among the uninitiated it will probably furrow brows. For some, it will be more than enough to learn that the minimum system requirements for using this CD-ROM are a Pentium processor running at 100 MHz; a Graphics display card capable of 800 x 600 resolution in HiColor (16 bit); the installation of QuickTime 3 (which can be downloaded from the disc, if necessary); an 8 x speed CD-ROM …

The Folio Society Edition Of George Eliot's Fiction

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Millennium has provided a number of reasons for celebration, but for members of the Fellowship and admirers of George Eliot generally the year 2000 will see two signal recognitions of her status. Before it is out, the Oxford Reader s Companion to George Eliot, under the general editorship of John Rignall and with contributions from informed enthusiasts and scholars all over the world, will be issued and will provide a permanent commentary on and record of her life and works. And now the Folio Society, publishers of attractive editions, generally with illustrations by gifted engravers, have issued in January, …

George Eliot And Archery, Arthur G. Credland

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

As a practicing archer with a keen interest in the history of the sport it has struck me that the importance of archery to the development of Eliot's final novel Daniel Deronda (1876) has not been properly appreciated. It provides the context for Gwendolen Harleth's fateful encounter with Grand-court, first at the Brackenshaw archery meeting where she strikes three successive golds (central hits), and subsequently at the archery ball, where he singles her out as a dance partner. Later, it is in the course of the roving archery match at Cardell Chase that she discovers the existence of his mistress …

A Family's Eye View Of George Eliot, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

There have been very many views expressed over the years about George Eliot - her genius, her behaviour and, inevitably, her looks. But what were the views of her family back in Nuneaton? It is well known that her brother Isaac, then very much the Victorian patriarch, dismissed her from the Evans family when he knew about her liaison with G. H. Lewes. They could not subsequently be unaware of her fame and there may have been many criticisms of her expressed within the family circle.

Some family letters still exist and are in my possession, but there are not …

Wreath-Laying In Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, Chris Smith

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Guest of Honour was The Rt Hon. Chris Smith, MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The Address he gave is summarized below:

Mr. Smith is a great admirer of George Eliot and it is said that he takes with him on holiday each year one of George Eliot's novels! He began by noting that he was standing next to the memorial stone to Henry James and he reminded us of James's admiration for George Eliot. Henry James wrote on 5 March 1873 'a marvellous mind throbs in every page of Middlemarch. It raises the standard of …

The Margins Of George Eliot: Editing The Journals, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Margins are back in fashion: it's no longer marginal to be marginal. Postcolonial theory has had the effect of demonstrating the relation between the imperial centre and the periphery of empire to be one of interaction and mutual reaction, not of straightout dominance by the one of the Other. Similarly, in textual theory, marginalia and other apparatus are read in a dialogic or intertextual relation to the text and do not simply take their place in a hierarchy subordinate to it. D. C. Greetham goes further, claiming that 'these days, the margins are a peculiarly privileged position, as the formalist …

Annual Report 1999, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

During 1999 we were unusually busy in planning the extra events to take place in 2000. Before I began this report I had spent a few weeks updating the Story of the George Eliot Fellowship which had been published for our fiftieth anniversary in 1980 and now needed a further 20 busy years added. So, as I began the report of activities for 1999 I had many other years buzzing around in my head. However, 1999 is now clear of those seventy years, and I am happy to begin with the news that 1999 was another profitable year for the …

Conference Report George Eliot And Her Work: Anakara Turkey, March 1999, Laurence Raw

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's works are not well-known in Turkey, except for The Mill on the Floss, which is regularly studied in university departments of English Literature as part of an introductory course to the English novel, and Silas Mamer, which is occasionally included in postgraduate courses in nineteenth-century literature. There have been only four published translations of her novels - three of The Mill on the Floss (in 1970, 1975 and 1981) and one of Silas Mamer (1977), plus an introductory guide to her work, which appeared as long ago as 1949.

The main aim of the two-day 'George Eliot and …

Review Of George Eliot And Intoxication: Dangerous Drugs For The Condition Of England, Kathleen Mccormack

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Famously insisting to her friend Barbara Bodichon that our 'highest calling' is 'to do without opium', George Eliot is not a writer whom one immediately associates with intoxication, although one of her earliest stories, 'Janet' s Repentance' in Scenes of Cle rical Life, memorably dramatizes the addictive and destructive power of alcohol in the lives of Janet and her husband, the lawyer Dempster. Kathleen McCormack's study casts its net wider than such straightforward representations of drink and drunkenness to explore the tissue of references to, and images of, intoxication, and the drugs that induce it, throughout the fiction. Intoxication, with …

The Twenty-Eight George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 1999, Josie Billington

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Middlemarch is widely recognized as being one of the most strenuously narrated novels in English literature. Many of the most moving, and most quoted, lines of the novel are the product of direct narrational intervention and the reader is aware of the surrounding, solicitous presence of the author-narrator throughout the novel. Throughout this paper, I am going to be looking closely at a number of short passages from the novel in order to try to establish the 'tasks' - as I call them - which George Eliot undertakes and fulfils through her narrator in Middlemarch. But I should like to …

Towards A Critical Reputation: Henry James On Felix Holt, The Radical, Christine Richards

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A productive starting point for a critical evaluation of Henry James's criticism of George Eliot's fiction is his unsigned review of Felix Halt, the Radical, 1 which, as his first piece of criticism on her, is perhaps itself most usefully read against the background of the novel's extremely favourable contemporary reception,' for in his review lames addresses the issues of the novel's acclaim, arguing not only that the volume of praise it had already acquired was sufficient but also that Eliot's increasing reputation would only attract more (E&W 911). This determination to call a halt to the praise showered on …

The George Eliot Review: Journal Of The George Eliot Fellowship 2000 No. 31, Beryl Gray, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors ........................................... 5

Editors' Note ................................................ 7

ADDRESSES Colonel Christopher Hendy: Address at the wreath-laying in the George Eliot Memorial Gardens, 13 June 1999 ................................................. 9

Rt Hon. Chris Smith MP: Address at the wreath-laying in Westminster Abbey, 23 June 1999 ................................................. 11

Josie Billington: The Twenty-Eighth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 16 October 1999 ................................................ 13

Kathryn Hughes: The Toast to the Immortal Memory: George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 21 November 1999 ........................................... 27

ARTICLES Rebecca Mackay: Women and Fiction in George Eliot's 'Brother Jacob' (Prize Essay) ................................................................................... .31

Margaret Harris: The Margins of George Eliot: Editing the …

George Eliot's English Travel: "Widely Sundered Elements", Kathleen Mccormack

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Although the Midlands people, places, and stories that turn up in Scenes of Clerical Life provide the first and most easily recognized Warwickshire models in George Eliot's fiction, she also drew creatively on models she found during the many holidays and working trips she made throughout her life elsewhere within Britain. Readers' recognitions of the originals of Amos Barton and Mr. Tryan after the Scenes appeared in Blackwaod's Magazine led George Eliot to assure John Blackwood that she assembled her fiction not exclusively from her girlhood experiences but instead from 'widely sundered elements' (GEL, II, 459).' But, while Midlands models …

Silas Marner And Felix Holt: Antitheses And Affinities, Ruth Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

At first sight there seems little to link Silas Mamer with Felix Halt. There are certainly contrasts, but it is harder to find similarities between a short pastoral idyll and a complex political work that looks forward to Middlemarch rather than backward to Silas Mamer. Surely there can be few links between a fairy-tale and social analysis, between a novel rich with 'Rainbow' humour and transformed 'gold' and a much darker novel laced with irony but short on both magic and jokes. Only five years separate Silas Mamer (published in April 1861) from Felix Halt (published in June 1866) but …

Women And Fiction In George Eliot's "Brother Jacob", Rebecca Mackay

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'Brother Jacob' raises issues of perennial concern to George Eliot as an author who was also a woman. In particular, this fabular tale about a hapless confectioner and his imbecilic brother exposes the pitfalls in women's relationship(s) to cultural authority, 'the strange bright fruits of knowledge' (Woolf 160). As a fable whose hero is distinguished by fraudulence and guile, 'Brother Jacob' reflects its author 's attitude towards plagiarists and other impostors with pretensions to authorship. Even as Marian Evans disguised herself as George Eliot, the 'silly lady novelist' of her day is disguised in the story's protagonist, David Faux.

As …

Review Of George Eliot: The Last Victorian & The Journals Of George Eliot, Margaret Harris, Judith Johnston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Kathryn Hughes has written a most readable biography, breezy, relaxed, clear narrative, just right for the reader of literary biography who isn't deeply interested in literature. The story of Mary Ann and Marian Evans, Marian Evans Lewes, George Eliot and Mrs. Cross is as fascinating as the plot of the novels, and bears re-telling, but I'm doubtful about the appeal of this new book to scholars and students, whose needs for information about George Eliot's life are served by the existing biographies, and who may be misled by the sketchy criticism. It is not as if Kathryn Hughes fills the …

Obituaries: The Rt Hon. The Viscount Daventry 1921-2000; Patron Of The George Eliot Fellowship

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Francis Humphrey Maurice FitzRoy Newdegate, 3rd Viscount Daventry, died at his home, Temple House at Arbury, on 15 February. He had been ill for some time.

The Arbury Estate spans 4000 acres between Nuneaton and Bedworth and it was in one of the estate's farmhouses, South Farm, then known as Arbury Farm, that George Eliot was born in 1819 when her father was agent to the Arbury estate. It was because of this association with Arbury that Lord Daventry was invited to succeed his mother as Patron when she died in 1982. Until his illness he had taken a lot …

Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Garden Nuneaton, 13 June 1999, Christopher Hendy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Guest of Honour was Col. Christopher Hendy, OBE, the Administrator at Arbury Hall. He gave the following Address:

We are here today to celebrate the life and works of George Eliot. 'I have heard of him, of course, but I have never read any of his books' - that is the expression that I, and many of the guides at Arbury hear when we mention the connection that George Eliot had with Arbury Hall and Park. At the time that Mary Ann Evans was writing her novels it was not politic to let it be known that the author …

Obituary Of Jerome Beaty, 1924-2000

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Jerome Beaty died on 30 January 2000, at the age of 75, after a year of illness during which he was working actively on Dickens and George Eliot. He was a fine Victorian scholar and critic, an editor, and a pioneer in the field of George Eliot textual studies. His book Middlemarch from Notebook to Novel (Urbana, 1960) analysed the genesis and composition of one of the most complex English novels, revealing that what seemed a seamless whole, more praised than studied, had its origin in two separate narrative beginnings and plans. He showed the painstaking scissors-and-paste which put together …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon: The Toast To The Immortal Memory 1999, Kathryn Hughes

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is a tremendous honour to be talking to you today. When I first started work on my biography of George Eliot back in 1993 I never imagined that I would one day be celebrating her birthday with the people to whom her life and work mean so much, the members of the George Eliot Fellowship.

Of course, when I began my research all those years ago, I knew that I would be learning about one of the greatest literary artists of the nineteenth century. But what I hadn't anticipated was just how modem and relevant George Eliot's work would …

Milly Barton And Emma Gwyther, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

For many years the tomb of Emma Gwyther in Chilvers Coton Churchyard in Nuneaton was totally obscured by a massive yew tree until it was recently cut back to reveal the sorry state of the tomb beneath it. Badly broken and its lettering difficult to read, it was clearly in great need of some restoration because of its place in the George Eliot story.

There seems little doubt that Emma Gwyther was the original of Milly Barton, the hard-working wife of the Rev. Amos Barton in Scenes of Clerical Life. Emma's husband was the Rev. John Gwyther, curate of Chilvers …

An Echo Of The "Holy War", Bill Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's 'Holy War' began on 2 January 1842 and lasted for four and a half months. That day her father made a significant entry in his Journal: 'Went to Trinity Church in the forenoon ... Mary Ann did not go'. In the protracted dispute with her father that followed this refusal to accompany him to church, her friends the Sibrees arranged for her to meet the Rev. Francis Watts, Professor of Theology at Spring Hill College, Birmingham, to try to help her resolve her difficulties. Their meeting probably took place in March 1842, and subsequently she wrote him six …

A Tchaikovsky/George Eliot Opera That Never Happened

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Tchaikovsky Museum at Klin in Moscow in Russia had, amongst the composer's papers, a manuscript of fragments of a scenario for an opera on the theme of 'Mr. Gilfil 's Love-Story', the second story in Scenes of Clerical Life.

Tchaikovsky modestly mentions this in his biography, stating that at first he proposed an opera based on 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton', the first story in Scenes but was drawn instead to another of the stories, 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story'. The composer's friend, the music critic G. A. Larosh, mentions in his memoirs that for some weeks before …