Comparative Literature Commons^™

The Thirty-Second George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2003; What's In A Name: Competing Claims To The Authority Of George Eliot, Pam Hirsch

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The contentious issue of fame, infamy, and notoriety is the issue at stake in this lecture. On the one hand I focus attention on a tiny moment at the beginning of George Eliot's career, but argue that its gendered implications remain provocative. It acts as a test case of how nineteenth-century women writers had to justify the 'unfeminine' attribute of ambition. It also tells us something about the double standards operating in the reception of fiction by male and female writers.

On 1 February 1859 literary history was made with the publication of a novel called Adam Bede. A chorus …

Toast To George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 23 November 2003; The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Rosalind Shanks

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Foreword: I have written the following speech after I delivered it - long after. Much thought went into the preparation. However I did not want to read at the lunch, I wanted to talk. I spoke with only skeletal notes and a script of 'The Female Shakespeare, so to speak' to hand in case I dried. I may have forgotten things that I actually said and included things that I meant to say on the day and didn't - my apologies. I did not expect the Toast to be printed.

Toast

Why am I here? That is not a philosophical …

Basil And Vampire: Fears Of Dissection In Middlemarch, Keiji Yata

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In the final chapter of George Eliot's Middlemarch, after describing the death of Lydgate and Rosamond's subsequent second marriage to 'an elderly and wealthy physician', the narrator tells us that Lydgate

once called her his basil plant; and when she asked for an explanation, said that basil was a plant which had flourished wonderfully on a murdered man's brains. (Finale; 513)

Rosamond is, before marrying Lydgate, 'admitted to be the flower of Mrs. Lemon's school, the chief school in the county' (11; 62). Now her husband uses a different metaphor. In what sense can Lydgate consider himself 'murdered'?

Tertius Lydgate …

Review Of The Mills On The Floss: George Eliot & Le Moulin Sur La Floss, Alain Jemeau

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Writing to her first French translator, Francois d' Albert-Durade, in 1865, George Eliot remarked on how little known his translations appeared to be in France, since she was always being approached by people who wanted to translate her works into French. After her death d' Albert-Durade's La Famille Tulliver: ou le Moulin sur la Floss did go on to be reprinted several times from the late nineteenth century onwards, but it has now been superseded by a new translation by Alain Jumeau which will have more appeal to modem readers and will certainly reach a far wider audience than d' …

Annual Report 2003, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Fellowship year always begins with the Annual General Meeting and in 2003 we amended our Constitution to exclude our Vice Presidents from the management team. This was because the Charity Commission rule that all members of the Fellowship Council are automatically trustees of the charity, and are unable to receive any payment from the Fellowship. This meant that we could not pay any of them for lectures, readings etc - an unacceptable situation. All the Vice Presidents were happy with this decision and we still keep them closely in touch with our affairs through the Minutes of the Council's …

'That Vankyke Duchess': Portraiture And Epic In Daniel Deronda, Susannah Rutherglen

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Portraits abound in Daniel Deronda - not only on the drawing-room walls of the Grandcourts and Mallingers, and in the 'grave Holbein faces' of the Meyrick family lithographs, but also in the actions and physiognomies of the novel's characters themselves. Daniel, in whom 'the family faces of various types, seen on the walls of the gallery, found no reflex' (166), nonetheless 'had that sort of resemblance to the preconceived type which a finely individual bust or portrait has to the more generalized copy left our minds after a long interval' (479).1 Gwendolen, 'that Vandyke duchess of a beauty' (558), sees …

'That Most Despicable Travesty Of A Women': Eliza Lynn Linton And Elma Stuart, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The George Eliot Collection in Nuneaton Library includes a previously unpublished letter written by Elma Stuart, one of George Eliot's greatest admirers. It was written in response to a critical and spiteful article about George Eliot in 1895 by Eliza Lynn Linton in the journal The Woman at Home. It was inevitable that the vicious article would antagonize Elma, who was so besotted with her idol that she had engraved upon the headstone on her grave in Highgate Cemetery in London - and next to George Eliot's own grave .... 'whom for 8'h blessed years George Eliot called by the …

Japanese Branch Report 2003, Yoshei Abe

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The seventh annual convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Nihon University in Tokyo, on Saturday 29 November 2003.

The morning session began with an opening address by Kimitaka Hara, a vice-president of the Japanese Branch and a professor at Nihon University. In the morning, three members read their papers under the chairmanship of Noriko Kubota, a professor at Tsuru Bunka University and Kyoko Kishimoto, a professor at Kyoto Sangyo University.

The first paper, "'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton" - the beginning of conflict' was presented by Naomi Ohno, a lecturer at Toyo …

Review Of Rereading George Eliot: Changing Responses To Her Experiments In Life, Bernard J. Paris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

While he was still writing his doctoral thesis, which became his influential Experiments in Life: George Eliot's Questfor Values (1965), Paris fully accepted the rhetoric in Eliot's fiction that is designed to shape our moral and intellectual responses to her characters. By rhetoric Paris means not just Eliot's 'authorial commentary but titles, chapter headings, epigraphs, characters' observations about one another, the use of foils and juxtapositions, and a wide variety of stylistic and tonal devices ... ' (p.15). All of these combine to persuade us to see her characters maturing, becoming wiser, more often than not through painful bouts of …

The Two Timothy Coopers, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Once or twice when I read and re-read the scene of the railway survey in Middlemarch I felt a sense of niggling lost connection, then one day I belatedly found it. George Eliot had copied the name of Elizabeth Gaskell's Timothy Cooper, in Cousin Phillis, for her character in Middlemarch.

Eliot wrote to Gaskell1 that she felt an affinity with 'the feeling which inspired "Cranford" and the earlier chapters of "Mary Barton'" and had read Cranford when writing Scenes of Clerical Life and Mary Barton when writing Adam Bede. When The Moorland Cottage was proposed as source for The Mill …

Chronological Bibliography Of The Works Of Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Lucinda L. Damon-Bach, Allison J. Roepsch, Melissa J. Homestead

Department of English: Faculty Publications

This two-part bibliography has been built by consulting the Bibliography of American Literature (BAL) and the bibliographies compiled by Sister Mary Michael Welsh ("Catharine Maria Sedgwick: Her Position in the Literature and Thought of Her Time up to 1860," Ph.D. diss., Catholic Universiry of America, 1937) and Richard Banus Gidez ("A Study of the Works of Catharine Maria Sedgwick," Ph.D. diss., Ohio State Universiry, 1958); library cataloging records; and the personal records of Lucinda Damon-Bach and Melissa J. Homestead. In most cases, entries have been confirmed through books, periodicals, photocopies, or microfilm received through interlibrary loan. We were not able …

Review Of The Lifted Veil, Tim Heath

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It was perhaps Herbert Spencer in his Autobiography (1904) who first disseminated the myth that, though George Eliot will remain for posterity one of our finest novelists, her weakness was that she could not construct effective, dramatic plots. By implication, her stories would thus not be effective on the stage, without the commentary of her wise, omniscient narrator. Perhaps in consequence there have been fewer dramatic adaptations of George Eliot's work than those of other nineteenth-century novelists, including Jane Austen and Dickens - this despite, amongst others, an extremely distinguished silent film based on Romola, starring Lillian Gish, in 1924. …

Address Of Wreath-Laying In Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey 20 June 2002, Margaret Wolfit

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Dear George Eliot

You don't know me - but I have been a great admirer of yours for a long time now, since I was at school in fact. I must have been very young when I first had parts of your novels read to me. Later when I was at boarding school I studied Silas Mamer for a literature exam - I can't recall my reaction to other authors at the time - but I know I wrote a letter home saying I thought George Eliot must be a wonderful person because my mother kept the letter.

After leaving …

Review Of Lives Of Victorian Literary Figures I, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ralph Pite, Gail Marshall, Corinna Russell, Matthew Bevis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Like Pickering and Chatto's Lives of the Great Romantics, these volumes, each one devoted to a major Victorian writer, offer a collection of facsimile reproductions of 19th or early 20th century essays, reviews and extracts from memoirs and biographies with the emphasis, according to Ralph Pite's 'General Introduction', on material hard to find outside copyright libraries. Each volume contains a thoughtful and illuminating introduction; pithy but highly informative headnotes to each item, outlining the personal relationship (if any) and general attitude of its author towards Eliot, Dickens or Tennyson and in the process attuning our ears to the sound of …

Japanese Branch Report, Itsuyo Shimizu

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The sixth annual convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Tezukayama University in an ancient city, Nara, on Saturday 30 November 2002. Before the opening, the members who arrived early enjoyed Romola (a silent film directed by Henry King, 1924) and opera music (arranged by Kiyoko Tsuda, a head official of the Japanese branch).

The morning session began with an opening address by Kiyoko Tsuda, a professor at Tezukayama University. In the morning, four members read their papers under the chairmanship of Professor Yoshiko Tanaka and Professor Shigeko Tomita.

The first paper, 'Women in Scenes of …

Review Of Lectures D'Une Amvre: George Eliot, 'The Mill On The Floss', Maria Tang

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's novels have never been received in France with great enthusiasm. Translatiom have been relatively sparse, and it is still difficult to find more than one or two titles in Paris. even in the best academic bookshops, whereas Jane Austen's novels are widely read. Only a detailed reception history could reveal the reasons for this response, although it no doubt has something to do with the high Victorian tone and sentiments of George Eliot's writing, which would have fallen on deaf ears in late nineteenth-century France and a fortiori in the successive phases of twentieth-century modernism. The renewed interest …

Notes On Contributors 2003

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Kathleen Adams has been Secretary of the Fellowship since 1968. She initiated the Review in 1970, was editor until 1981 and co-editor 1982-91. She published Those of Us Who Loved Her in 1980 and A Community of Interest: The Story of the George Eliot Fellowship 1930-2000 in 2000.

Terence Cave is Emeritus Professor of French, Oxford University, and Emeritus Research Fellow, St John's College. He has edited the Penguin edition of Daniel Deronda (1995) and the Oxford World's Classics edition of Silas Marner (1996). He is the author of Recognitions: A Study in Poetics (1988) and numerous books and articles …

'The Mill On The Floss' And 'Silas Marner': New Casebooks, Nahem Yousaf, Andrew Maunder

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This collection of essays on two of George Eliot's most popular novels adds to the growing number of Casebooks produced by Palgrave. These are useful volumes, particularly for students, providing as they do a selection of recent critical perspectives. That said, I would have thought that The Mill on the Floss might have merited a volume all to itself; however the choice of essays contained herein provides some interesting links both within and across the two novels discussed.

In their Introduction, the editors comment that 'the essays reprinted in this New Casebook serve as a reminder of the dimensions of …

Toast To George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 24 November 2002 The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Andrew Davies

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In November 2002, 'my' adaptation of Daniel Deronda finally reached the screen, on BBCl. The production had been anticipated for years, and many people must have wondered what made it take so long.

Middlemarch, in 1994, had been a great labour of love for all involved in the production, and was received so well that it's not an exaggeration to say that it revived the reputation of the Classic Serial, and the then sagging reputation of the BBC itself. I was keen to adapt more George Eliot, and the BBC were favourably inclined.

I had, shamefully, never read Daniel Deronda, …

Letter To The Secretary Of The Fellowship, David Mendel, Kent

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Dear Kathleen Adams

I am writing to say thank you very much for all the work which you continue to do on behalf of us punters. If I weren't 80 I would volunteer for some job myself to ease your load, but my get up and go has got up and ·is gone.

I was disappointed with Rosalind Miles 's Memorial Lecture. Having set up a pretty spurious list of straw men - and women - she spent the rest of the lecture proving what we all know anyway, which is that GE rises above all that.

In addition she …

Review Of Faithful Realism: Elizabeth Gaskell And Leo Tolstoy A Comparative Study, Josie Billington

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Who is the English novelist worthy of comparison with Tolstoy? The name of George Eliot immediately suggests itself, though even Middlemarch does not have the range of War and Peace. What Henry James said of Eliot - that she is 'also a good deal of a philosopher and it is to this union of the keenest observation with the ripest reflection that her style owes its essential force' - seems to apply to Tolstoy as well. F. R. Leavis, we recall, invoked the name of the Russian novelist in his appraisal of Eliot, arguing that the best parts of …

Review Of George Eliot, Music And Victorian Culture, Delia Da Sousa Correa

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Delia da Sousa Correa takes as starting point 'the yearning for spiritual expansion and sympathetic experience' so evident in George Eliot; and music, an 'undersong' to the desires of transcendence and affinity, is the prime concern in da Sousa Correa's exploration of its transformations in Eliot's fiction. To do this, da Sousa Correa explores a range of intellectual and cultural contexts for Eliot's work, though not all those her title's inclusive 'Victorian culture' might suggest. Da Sousa Correa acknowledges Beryl Gray's George Eliot and Music (1989) and rightly claims her approach differs fundamentally, the two studies being complementary. Da Sousa …

Annual Report 2002, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

2002 was, as always, a busy year, and the one in which we published our Pitkin Guide to George Eliot. This was something of a milestone for us as Pitkin Guides are so well known around the UK and it seemed right that George Eliot should be included in the vast number of Pitkin titles.

We held our Annual General Meeting on 15 March and re-elected, with great pleasure, our President, Jonathan Ouvry, for another three-year term. Jonathan is so supportive of everything we do. We had been again without a treasurer until Jill Bridgewater agreed to replace Sophie Pavier …

Review Of George Eliot A Bibliographical History, William Baker, John C. Ross

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This enormously impressive history is the fruit of something like thirty-five years of work by William Baker and John Ross. They have brought together a huge and comprehensive body of bibliographical information, broken down into five main sections and two appenctixes. There are extensive entries and notes on the major works; minor literary works (novellas and poetry); essays and reviews; miscellaneous writing (unpublished works in publishable genres, compilations of short extracts, partly authored writings, unpublished autobiographical writings); collections and collected works (more poetry, essays, novels and complete works); and 'Eliotiana' (sequels, settings for songs from The Spanish Gypsy, collections of …

Review Of George Eliot And Schiller: Intertextuality And Cross-Culural Discourse, Dutch Readings Of George Eliot, Deborah Guth, Deiderik L. Van Werven

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In their very different ways these two studies contribute significantly to our understanding of George Eliot's place in the wider context of European literary culture. Diederik van Werven examines the nineteenth-century reception of her novels in the Netherlands, thus filling in what is, for most of the English-speaking world, a blank space in the map of her contemporary reputation; while Deborah Guth reads her work through the lens provided by the well-known but relatively neglected Schiller, who was the fust German writer to arouse her enthusiasm, but who was later supplanted, both in her own life and in subsequent critical …

Commemorative Occasions In 2002, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The George Eliot Memorial Garden in Nuneaton reached its half century in May 2002. In 1930 several literary men, amongst them George Bernard Shaw, were asked if Nuneaton should erect a memorial to George Eliot. Most of them expressed astonishment that one was not already in existence. They may have been even more amazed to discover that it would be another twenty-two years before one appeared, for it was not until 1952 that the George Eliot Memorial Garden was established.

The Newdegate family at Arbury Hall was one step ahead of Nuneaton as an obelisk had already been erected by …

The Thirty-First George Eliot Memorial Lecture; Jane Austen And George Eliot: Afterlives And Letters, Joanne Shattock

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'A woman and her book are identical' - or so the American writer Edgar Allen Poe reflected when reading an early collection of poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.' Remembering the autobiographical nature of much of Barrett Browning's early work, his comment is not surprising. But it has a more general relevance for nineteenth-century women writers. The charge that they could only write of what they knew, and that what they knew best was themselves, was made regularly by reviewers. The easy association of the life and the work, or more accurately, a refusal to separate them, was crucial to the …

Address At Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Garden, Nuneaton 30 June 2002, Jonathan G. Ouvry

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I thought that I would talk today about a previously unexplored topic - George Eliot and cats. Unfortunately, I find that the reason why the topic is previously unexplored is that George Eliot, unlike the other Eliot, had very little, or possibly nothing, to say about cats. There may have been the odd un-named farm cat lurking about in Adam Bede, but nothing on which one could construct a ten-minute talk in the open air.

Dogs, of course, are quite another story, both real and fictional. There was Pug, a present from John Blackwood, sadly lost after only eighteen months, …

George Eliot: Elegies And Eulogies, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The death of George Eliot on 22 December 1880 occasioned many prose obituaries and also a number of verse tributes.' I have located eleven of these in all, along with a twelfth poem published in her lifetime: nine poets are represented, of whom four are women and five men (assuming J. S. Dawson and 'K. G.' to be male). Together, the poems provide a sidelight on her reputation. Elegy frequently mourns dead poets and establishes poetic genealogies: while George Eliot's fame depends on her fiction rather than her poetry, her eminence in letters as well as her moral and intellectual …

Review Of Middlemarch, Margret Stevens, Annelies Roeleveld

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The recent appearance of a Dutch translation of Middlemarch, in a prestigious series of classics by a leading publishing house, may well be considered as constituting 'cultural justice', and it is justice long overdue. Ever since the mid-nineteenth century, there has been a flourishing market for English literature in the Netherlands, in the original as well as in translation. Of recent years, publishing practice has been carefully to coordinate publication of translations with that of English editions, for once an English novel is available, there is hardly a market for translations. That makes it even more remarkable that there is …