Comparative Literature Commons^™

Westminster Abbey Wreath-Laying

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

June 1990 marked the tenth anniversary of the unveiling of the memorial stone to George Eliot in Poets' Corner. The anniversary service was held as closely in content as possible to the one ten years earlier and our Guest of Honour was the Revd. Dr. EDW ARD CARPENTER K.C. V.O. who, as Dean of Westminster in 1980, conducted our service on that important day and had also been very much a part of our negotiations with the Abbey long before the project came to fruition. We have affectionate memories of our association with him during that time and it was …

Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Gardens, Nuneaton On June 17th 1990, Hilda Gunn

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I count it a great honour to be here to pay tribute to George Eliot and especially as it is shortly to be the Diamond Jubilee of the Fellowship, founded by the late Francis Cross in 1930.

I cannot claim to be the oldest member, either in years or in length of membership, but my first introduction to George Eliot the novelist goes back even more than sixty years. As a jubilee is not only a time of rejoicing but of looking back, I would like to share with you some of my recollections.

In October 1927 I began to …

George Eliot Fellowship Annual General Meeting- Treasurer's Report

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This being my first report to you as Treasurer I would like to begin by thanking my predecessor, Brenda Evans, for her initial instruction into the nature of the job, for her continuing help throughout the year and for her patience in forwarding mail for the time it took to get addresses sorted out. I would also like to thank your Council and especially your Secretary, Kathleen, for their help and understanding towards a "new boy".

Turning now to the accounts, you will see that I have made some changes to the presentation. In particular, at the left hand side …

A Letter From George, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

BBC CWR is a new local radio station launched at the beginning of the year to cover Coventry and Warwickshire. It became clear very early on that the station wished to show an interest in and pay tribute to George Eliot. A Letter from George was their first attempt and from the success of this I feel we can look forward to a long period of co-operation between the Fellowship and the BBC in Warwickshire in relation to George Eliot.

In choosing eight episodes of about ten minutes each it was inevitable that the life of the novelist would be …

Review Of Emily Davies And The Liberation Of Women, Kathleen Adams, Daphne Bennett

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Daphne Bennett has rewritten, in this book on Emily Davies, the history of the feminist movement. She seethes when she hears people talk about the movement as though it began with the suffragettes, for her heroine had been working for the emancipation of women for 50 years before the suffragettes were making themselves noticed in no uncertain manner.

Emily Davies was one of the great pioneers in the cause of women but little is, or has been, really known about her. She has often been confused with Emily Davison who threw herself under the feet of the King's horse, but …

Going, Going, Gone.......... But Where? A Slightly Sad Look At A House Sale, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

During the last decade Antique and Collectors' Fairs have flourished in Britain and are a very popular way for many of the population to spend a pleasant afternoon browsing amongst the items for sale. Forty years ago, when I began collecting - in a very modest way - antique shops were way out of my bracket and it was in junk shops that I picked up what I now regard as bargains. In those days few people seemed to be collecting pretty pieces of china or old pieces of brass and the prices were low. Junk shops, particularly in the …

Westminster Abbey Wreath Laying: George Eliot And The Working-Day Business Of The World, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

One of the Shakespeare quotations most frequently used by George Eliot in her writings is an otherwise little-known phrase from As You Like It, Act 1 scene iii, where Rosalind, about to leave the court for the Forest of Arden, says, '0, how full of briars is this working-day world!' In George Eliot' s work the phrase is illustrative of her theory of realism in fiction, the theory most famously expressed in Adam Bede, where the author praises the truthfulness of Dutch paintings, describing the sympathy which is aroused in her by 'these faithful pictures of a monotonous homely existence', …

Annual Report 1989

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

1989 has been another full, rewarding and successful year for the Fellowship. The work involved in running the Fellow Ship on a day to day basis has much increased over the years and this in itself must be a measure of our growth and success for, surely, success breeds more work - and that is as it should be.

At the Annual General Meeting in March, which began our year, three of the four officers were re-elected. John Bunn succeeded Brenda Evans as treasurer - Brenda had been bowed down by school work during her period of office, but the …

Review Of Annotated Critical Bibliography Of George Eliot, Graham Handley, George Levine

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

No complete bibliography of George Eliot's works and the biography, scholarship and criticism on her exists. This compilation, which is heavily selective and inconsistent, is a great disappointment. Editions of George Eliot's writings are not included, and the selection contains a number of gaps. For example, Valentine Cunningham's Everywhere Spoken Against (1975) is not included. I find it hard to justify the publication of this book: 128 pages, with 3 -6 entries per page bringing us to a grand total of 3 82 - a fraction of what is worth recording - means that by any standards this is very …

George Eliot And The Linnet's Life, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In the last year of her life, George Eliot gave John Walter Cross her copy of The Linnet's Life, which was published in 1822. At an earlier time, she had inscribed on the recto of the frontispiece:

"This little book is the first present I ever remember having

received from my father. Let anyone who thinks of me with

some tenderness after I am dead, take care of this book for my

sake. It made me very happy when I held it in my little hands,

and read it over and over again; and thought the pictures

beautiful, especially the …

Review Of Adam Bede At The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, Surrey, Rosalind Holt

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Gaps in appreciation.

The rash boast of many an English teacher - that Middlemarch is the greatest novel in our language - is enough to put most people off literature for life.

City Limits

Dinah Morris ... played ... has a warm humanity which is a distinct improvement on the preachifying original.

The Staines Informer

Some of our best stories are buried in thick tomes, accessible only to literature students who often fail to appreciate their beauty, or to academics.

Surrey Comet

.... thankless task ... as Seth Bede, the least satisfactory character in the novel

Financial Times

I remember …

Enter The Aunts: The 1990 George Eliot Reading By Gabriel Woolf, Gabriel Woolf

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I believe it was Henry James who wrote that any artistic performance requires 'the perfect presence of mind, unconfused, unhurried by emotion.' The quality of Gabriel Woolf' s performance in ENTER THE AUNTS fulfilled the requirements of Henry James as well as the expectations of the audience, and the artistry touched the heights.

A mind had certainly been present in choosing the programme, which provided a perfect blend of George Eliot and The Others. The bickering aunts from The Mill on the Floss seem to be everyone's favourites. George Eliot no doubt drew on her memories of her own maternal …

Review Of George Eliot: A Reference Guide, 1972-87, Karen L. Pangallo

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Karen L. Pangallo attempts to fill a gap in reference works on Eliot with this guide. Entries are arranged by years and then alphabetized by author. There are an Index of Authors, an Index of Secondary Titles, and an Index of Subjects (which would be helped by more detail).

In the preface Pangallo states that she has" attempted to compile a complete bibliography of references to George Eliot," and she cites Dissertations Abstracts International, the MLA International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modem Languages and Literatures, and a variety of other sources. The volume does seem to include …

The Kapellmeister, Bill Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

"Rosamond played admirably. Her master at Mrs. Lemon's school (close to a county town with a memorable history that had its relics in church and castle) was one of those excellent musicians here and there to be found in our provinces, worthy to compare with many a noted Kapellmeister in a country which offers more plentiful conditions of musical celebrity. Rosamond, with the executant's instinct, had seized his manner of playing, and gave forth his large rendering of noble music with the precision of an echo. It was almost startling, heard for the first time. A hidden soul seemed to …

Review Of Middlemarch: A Student's Companion To The Novel, Bert G. Hornback

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Advanced undergraduate or graduate students, as well as general readers who are quite familiar with Middlemarch, should find Homback's book interesting reading. It is well documented with frequent references to the Norton Critical Edition of Middlemarch, which Hornback edited, and to other sources.

This volume follows the standard format of the Masterwork series, including a chronology, a discussion of the historical context, a review of the critical reception, a discussion of key themes and ideas, and a bibliography and an index.

Thematic discussions take place under such chapter titles as "Seeing," "Feeling and Knowledge," "Being Heroic and Constructive," and "Reform." …

Message Of Greeting From The Fellowship President, Jonathan G. Ouvry

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It hardly seems possible that ten years have passed since the memorial stone was laid in Westminster Abbey. For the George Eliot Fellowship the stone-laying was an end, the accomplishment of something worked for for many years. For me it was a beginning, as it marked my introduction to the Fellowship, a happy meeting which I have had much cause to be pleased about ever since. For me the Fellowship has provided new and lasting friendships, much information about and insights into George Eliot and her work, the same in respect to George Henry Lewes, the opportunity to listen to …

George Eliot's "The Spanish Gypsy", A Neglected Work, Jocelyn West-Burnham

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

"Undoubtedly much the greatest poem of any wide scope and on a plan of any magnitude, which has ever proceeded from a woman"(1) This was the critical acclaim that George Eliot's "The Spanish Gypsy" received on its publication in 1868. It was a surprise to the writer herself, who had been prepared for criticism. This is evident in a letter to a friend following the completion of the poem (2). She notes in this her belief that many people would despise her for writing a work which would bring her little in the way of financial remuneration when she could …

Debasing The Biographical Currency, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Early in 1988 I was asked by a publisher in Bristol to write a book called George Eliot: The State of the Art. It was to be largely a survey of criticism, scholarship and biography ranging from contemporary responses to the novels as they appeared right through to the middle of last year (1989), the 170th anniversary of George Eliot's birth. The joy was, however, that it took me back to the works themselves as I checked what had been said; and it took me back to the Letters in Haight's edition. But some of the secondary literature - the …

Review Of George Eliot: An Intellectual Life, Valerie A. Dodd

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The tendency to produce esoteric books is one of the less pleasing registers of our critical and scholarly time. Valerie Dodd' s book fills a gap at great length, and in doing so examines a number of intellectual lives, among them those of Mill and Carlyle. It also presents a mini-thesis on Saint-Simonianism. All this is heavy preamble to Marian Evans (63 pages to be exact) and Marian's own heavy (and often passing) preoccupations before she began to write fiction. Sources are voluminous and often cited, so that the narrative is weighed down with references which arrest its flow while …

The Triumph Of Spirit Over Law: Free Will Versus Determinism In Adam Bede, William Klein

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

One of the primary intellectual influences that shaped George Eliot's thought was positivism, or rather the various influence of positivistic philosophers such as Comte, Mill, Spencer, Feuerbach and Lewes, who each in his own way subscribed to an empiricism dictating that knowledge of anything but actual phenomena is impossible, and thus rejected any metaphysical speculation concerning ultimate causes or origins. This is a broad definition of positivism, and perhaps generalizes at the expense of the fine points of the thinkers under discussion; however, George Eliot's ultimate rejection of the notion of a God whose existence cannot be empirically demonstrated was …

Obituary: Mrs. D.E. Beamish: Vice President Of The George Eliot Fellowship

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When Eva Beamish died in March she was in her ninety-first year. Her death this year has held a particular sadness for us since she was to have been our Guest of Honour at the Wreath-laying in Nuneaton in June. As this is the Fellowship's Diamond Jubilee year, it was thought most fitting that our wreath should be laid by our oldest member - certainly in terms of the length of her membership. Indeed, when we invited her, we were under the impression that she was a founder member but, in accepting the invitation, she pointed out that her father …

The Eighteenth George Eliot Memorial Lecture: Novelists And Things: George Eliot In A Victorian Perspective, Asa Briggs

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I am privileged as a historian of Victorian England to deliver this Memorial Lecture on the occasion of the 170th anniversary of George Eliot's birth. The future Queen was born on May 24th 1819, described by her father as ' a model of strength and beauty combined': George Eliot was born at five o'clock in the morning on November 22nd. This was the year of the Massacre of Peterloo, when discontent and repression drove the Lancashire radical Samuel Bamford to ask in his poem 'The Lancashire Hymn'

'Have we not heard the infant's cry

And mark'd its mother's tear;

That …

The George Eliot Fellowship Review 1990 No. 21, Kathleen Adams, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

DESIGN ON FRONT COVER:

To mark the Diamond Jubilee of the George Eliot Fellowship the design by Jenny Quy on the front cover was submitted to Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council Parks Department and is to be executed in flowers in a public flower bed in Coton Road, Nuneaton during the summer of 1990.

The Editors do not necessarily agree with the views expressed by contributors, nor does the George Eliot Fellowship accept responsibility for such views. No part of the REVIEW may be reproduced without the permission of the Editors.

Contributions are invited for the 1991 issue. They may …

Review Of Octavia Hill, Jonathan Ouvry, Gillian Darley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I find that objectivity is difficult to achieve when considering a work by or about someone with whom I have a family relationship, however distant. In the case of Octavia Hill, my great-great-aunt, I have been aware of her all my life as a figure revered in the family. Outside the family I have been aware of her work in the field of housing through my involvement with the Housing Association that bears her name, and of her role as one of the three founders of the National Trust.

It is perhaps surprising that there has been no full length …

The George Eliot Fellowship Accounts From The Year Ending

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

1989 P&L Statement and Balance sheet

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon: The Toast To The Immortal Memory- 1989, Gabriel Woolf

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Our invitation to Gabriel Woolf to propose the Toast on this annual occasion was given so that we could say thank you to him for 20 years of work on our behalf in promoting George Eliot in his own unique way. In proposing the Toast, he began by telling us about his own introduction to George Eliot. He was doing his National Service in the R.A.F. and was particularly lonely in an alien situation with people with whom he had little or nothing in common. He remembers vividly taking Romola down from an R.A.F. library shelf and being instantly captured …

Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Gardens, Nuneaton- 1989, Beryl Kerby

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I felt greatly honoured when I was invited to lay the Fellowship's wreath at today's ceremony. It was much later, when considering this address, that I realised I had studied none of George Eliot's works and had read very few.

However, I did know something of her. My parents and their friends all seem to have been involved, in some way, with the George Eliot Centenary celebrations in 1919 and very early on I was given a copy of Scenes of Clerical Life. How easy it is at Arbury Hall to look at the painting of Sir Roger Newdigate but …

Treasurer's Report- A.G.M.

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I agreed to take over the post of Treasurer to the George Eliot Fellowship two years ago, and have thoroughly enjoyed this experience and I have learned a great deal about the art of book-keeping.

However, my commitments at school, in an ever changing world of education, are such that I felt that I must hand over the treasurer's position to someone who, hopefully, has a little more time to look after your accounts.

You will see from the Statement of Income and Expenditure that the finances of the Fellowship are in a satisfactory position.

The High Income Bond matured, …

Review Of Reclaimed, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When Middlemarch was being issued in Eight Parts from December 1871 until December 1872, there was a strong readership interest in the fact that Dorothea and Lydgate had made, in each instance, a wrong choice of marriage mate. It went farther than this, some readers even expressing the view that Dorothea and Lydgate would have been ideally suited. With Daniel Deronda, which was also issued in parts from February to September 1876, readership sympathy was also involved. There was much dissatisfaction in Daniel's forsaking of Gwendolen at the end ('I said I should be forsaken: says Gwendolen in her anguish) …

Review Of The World's Classics Series: Middlemarch, Kathleen Porter, David Carroll

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

"It is a curious fact that when a writer has attained to a certain eminence, we English cease to bother ourselves about him. There he is, recognised, accepted, labelled." I recalled these words, from the conversation of Katherine Mansfield in 1920, and recorded in her journal, when I opened the World's Classics paperback edition of Middlemarch edited by David Carron, Professor of English literature at the University of Lancaster. Katherine Mansfield's opinion may have been well-grounded in 1920, but it would certainly not be valid today, especially in relation to George Eliot and her work. A glance at the Select …