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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, …

Preface And Introductory Materials To Approaches To Teaching Cather’S My Ántonia, Susan J. Rosowski

Department of English: Faculty Publications

The aim of this volume is to provide background and ideas others have found most helpful in teaching My Antonia. The portion presented here describes Cather's role in preparing the text and supervising the physical design of My Antonia, and reviews other writing by Cather relevant to My Antonia, as well as biographical studies and criticism recommended most often by instructors who teach it. It includes also a selective introduction to materials recommended for instructors' libraries: reference works on Cather, general background, biographical studies, and critical commentary. Finally, it surveys aids to teaching: pedagogical articles and non-print …

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 …

Who Are You. Herr Klesmer?, Mara Mauermann

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Who is Klesmer? He is not - as Gordon Haight points out - Franz Uszt; he may be Anton Rubinstein (2). Has anyone, I wonder, thought about the possibility that he may be just what his name proclaims: Klesmer? A klesmer, that is.

Klesmermeans 'a musician'. It is Yiddish and derives from 'k'lejsemer' - (3) musical instrument. The 'Klesmorim' were wandering Jewish musicians who played at weddings or on holidays like Purim, later also in public houses or on fair-grounds. They could play everything their audience demanded, from sentimental pieces to wild dancing tunes. Throughout the middle ages they had …

Romola On The American Stage, George V. Griffith

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

About George Eliot Americans were certain of two truths by the time of her death in 1880: she was a genius who was pushing the novel into a new terrain of seriousness, intense moral purpose, and artful design; she was also a glum realist in whose work characters were called to a high moral duty in a godless world without transcendent values. Lavish praise of her work from its first appearance in the United States in 1858 continued largely without qualification until the publication of Middlemarch in 1873. Throughout the seventies she was as frequently denounced, "gloom and doom" replacing …

Review Of Victorian Britain- An Encyclopedia, Ed Sally Mitchell

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

There is an old adage that if you have a large problem, the best way to tackle it is to break it down into small parts and deal with each in turn. The trouble with this theory is that if your problem is as large as the Victorian era the resultant number of parts is so huge that they resemble the unconnected pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, each individual piece having some value in its own right, but not giving an idea of the complete picture.

The reign of Queen Victoria, the longest in British history, witnessed an unprecedented explosion …

How, Twenty Years Ago, The George Eliot Fellowship Found Gabriel Woolf, Gabriel Woolf

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Starting a new friendship is often a very chanoey business and none more so than the friendship which developed between The George Eliot Fellowship and one of its staunchest supporters, Gabriel Woolf. Gabriel's recent 20th visit to Warwickshire to present his ann\J.al programme of Readings has reminded us how much of a fluke our finding him really was.

In 1969 the Fellowship planned to mark the 150th anniversary of George Eliot's birth with a week of celebrations in Nuneaton. We were then a very small society with a very inexperienced committee but, nothing daunted, we hoped to put the George …

Sacred And Secluar: George Eliot's Concept Of Pilgrimage, M. Joan Chard

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The distinctive tenor of George Eliot's mind was theological. Pre-eminent among Victorian novelists for her prodigious scholarship, she ventured into that realm of thought which Ruskin declared a "dangerous science for women - - one which they must indeed beware how they profanely touch - - that of theology" .'in a letter of6 November 1838 to Maria Lewis, her Nuneaton governess and first confidante, Eliot expressed her early preoccupation with the spiritual life and her wish not to "rest contented with making Christianity a mere addendum" to her pursuits, or "with tacking it as a fringe" to her garments: "May …

George Eliot And Music, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is a fascinating investigation of the influence of music on George Eliot, and how that influence permeates both her life and her writing. The focus is on three novels - The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda - but before that there is a brief musical biography. Or Gray asserts that hitherto the pervading presence of music in her work has been critically undervalued, that, in fact, music 'arches over' that work and 'greatly illuminates her artistry.' She praises the influence of the Brays in widening and deepening the young Marian Evans's capacity for appreciation, so that …

Review Of A George Eliot Chronology, Graham Handley, Timothy Hands

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On the face of it this is a much needed book, and certainly it makes a considerable contribution in a portable way to our ease of reference when we want to look up something in George Eliot's life or writing. But I am doubtful about the method used here of incorporating into the chronology historical or other facts. For example, on the first page (which covers the years 1819-27 in George Eliot's life) we find entries which say: 1821 (29 Jan) Death of George Ill. Accession of George IV (Regent since 1811): (17 Aug) Death of Queen Caroline. 1824 (19 …

Wreath Laying In The George Memorial Gardens, Nuneaton On June 12th 1988, When The Guest Of Honour Was John Burton, Chairman Of Bedworth Society, John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In the short time at my disposal I would like to talk briefly about four aspects of my interest in George Eliot and this area, from the standpoint of my position as chairman of The Bedworth Society. The four are the buildings in Bedworth; the buildings associated with George Eliot, especially Coton Free School; future developments for local societies like ours; and the need for integrity in all we do.

To start then, with buildings in Bedworth. As a preliminary to deciding what I would say today, I was making a mental list of the buildings still existing in Bedworth …

Literature Crossword, William Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CLUES ACROSS

1 Novel subtitled 'A Study of Provincial Ufe' (11)

6 'Rare' Mr Jonson (3)

9 George - - - -, sixth Baron Byron (6)

11 lane - - - - - , by 'Currer 26 across' (4)

12 In ------A.H.H., by Tennyson (8)

13 'Remembrance of things - - - - - " Shakespearian quotation used as the English translation of Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (4)

14 Surname of David Copperfield's aunt (8)

17 Miss Durbeyfield (4)

18 'Humble' Dickensian villain (4)

21 First name of 'the Boy who wouldn't grow up' (5)

22 One …

Review Of With Great Pleasure, Gabriel Woolf

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Well, Gabriel, you have completed the first twenty that 'will not come again'. It gives us great pleasure to say "thank you", on behalf of the George Eliot Fellowship, for all you have done for us. After twenty years we regard you as one of the family. Your regular visits have given many people a great deal of enjoyment, and you have garnished and enriched the Fellowship besides.

Your latest programme was received with great pleasure by all who heard it. Its form was intriguing: Inspiration, First Effort, Love up North, Music and Children's Hour. Was it biographical, autobiographical, or …

The George Eliot Fellowship Review 1989, Kathleen Adams, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CONTENTS -1989

President's Message........................ 1

Annual Report - 1988 2 Accounts - 1988......................... 7

Treasurer's Report - 1988............................ 8

George Eliot Memorial Lecture - 1988: George Eliot and Marriage by Graham Handley................... 10

Westminster Abbey Wreath-laying - 1988....................... 12

Sacred and Secular: George Eliot's Concept of Pilgrimage by M.loan Chard.............. 14

Nuneaton Wreath-laying - 1988.................... 18

Book Reviews: World's Classics Series: Middlemarch ed .. by David Carroll.................... 20

Scenes of Clerical Life ed. by Thomas A. Noble..................... 22

Romola on the American Stage by George V.Griffith.................... 23

Book Review: Victorian Britain - An Encyclopedia............................. 28

Literature Crossword..................... 29

How, Twenty …

Chaucer And George Eliot, George Schlesinger

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I was interested to read David Ball's article on "Triangular Patterns in Middlemarch" (Review No. 19, 1988) with its reference to farcical triangle situations. I have been wondering about similarities and connections between Chaucer and George Eliot - Middlemarch (and Daniel Deronda) as almost Eliot's answer to Chaucer's ''Marriage Group" of tales. The most concentrated and specific link seemed to be between the Merchant's Tale and the Casaubon-Dorothea - Will triangle. Given Eliot's interest in Chaucer (there are four Chaucer epigraphs in Middlemarch, three from comic contexts including one from the Wife's Prologue (ch.lxv) and one from the climax of …

George Eliots's Epigraphs: A Note, R.J. Owens

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot followed the conventions of her time in titling her novels either after their hero or heroine or the setting where the action takes place. Later she began to give titles to each chapter, or to the individual "Books" which made up the complete novel, or to both. Since the titular hero was sometimes not the only or the main centre of interest in the novel, for example in Felix Holt or Daniel Deronda, the practice of giving titles to "Books" helped, in the usual circumstances of nineteenth century publishing, to point the reader's attention to the appropriate aspect …

Review Of Virago Classics: Brother Jacob, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Brother Jacob, like The Lifted Veil, has always been in the shadow of George Eliot's longer and better known fiction, but Beryl Gray's afterword in this Virago edition brings it into the light. She offers interesting suggestions why the story was written after The Mill on the Floss and before Silas Marner, showing that the rhythms of George Eliot's creative life are revealing.

Our attention is drawn to those critics who have spoken disparagingly of the story, 'rather cheerless and austere' (U.C. Knoepflmacher), 'cynical and coldly sarcastic' (G. S. Haight) and 'that tedious tale' (W. J. Harvey). Those of us …

Review Of The World's Classics Series: Scenes Of Clerical Life, Hilda Gunn, Thomas A. Noble

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This edition of George Eliot's first fiction reproduces the text of the much acclaimed Clarendon Edition which is also edited by Thomas S. Noble. It is an excellent edition for a student because, besides being so reasonably priced, it contains a most concise chronology of George Eliot and explanatory notes which have been researched with great thoroughness.

In the Introduction, Thomas A. Noble stresses that George Eliot, as one-time editor of The Westminster Review. had been used to reviewing contemporary literature. She had, therefore, a very clear view of what she wished to accomplish as a novelist. She was convinced …

The Seventeenth George Eliot Memorial Lecture: George Eliot And Marriage, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Marian Evans and George Henry Lewes began to live together in July 1854, and her letters to friends and to her brother lsaac later show how seriously she regarded their relationship. As far as she was concerned it was permanent, a marriage of true minds and hearts. As she put it, 'Light and easily broken ties are what I neither desire theoretically nor could live for practically. Women who are satisfied with such ties do not act as I have done. They obtain what they desire and are still invited to dinner. 'In her letter to lsaac she refers to …

George Eliot: From Middlemarch To Manhattan, Catherine Civello

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Female novelists in this century from de Beauvoir to Drabble have acknowledged the contribution of the Victorian George Eliot. In Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter. for instance, Simone de Beauvoir reports that, during her school days, she tried to conceal her reading of Adam Bede from her mother because of the novel's character Hetty Sorrel, pregnant out of wedlock (11). The Mill on the Floss held the -future French feminist in its spell for many reasons:

I read a-novel which seemed to me to translate my spiritual exile into words: George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss made an even …

My Ántonia As Plains Epic, Paul A. Olson

Department of English: Faculty Publications

When I assign My Antonia, I teach it to the sons and daughters or more distant relatives, in blood or spirit, of the people it treats. I have had relatives of Mrs. Pavelka in my classes, citizens of Red Cloud and Wilber, Czechs who still retain their Czech culture, and classicists at the University of Nebraska who study what Cather studied here. It is thus impossible entirely to make the work of art defamiliarize the experience, as Shklovsky would have it do, nor would I want it to remove the students from their pasts and knowledge of family or …

The Romanticism Of My Ántonia: Every Reader's Story, Susan J. Rosowski

Department of English: Faculty Publications

Romanticism is fundamental to My Antonia, shaping the attitudes that control its structure, style, and narration, as well as its expectations of a reader. I immediately face a dilemma in teaching this romanticism, however, for most of my students haven't even the most rudimentary understanding of what romanticism is. They have negative associations of something emotional, irrelevant, and backward-looking; asked for details, they describe surface features that vaguely concern poets brooding about nature. Almost none understands romanticism as a way of knowing, by which individuals use their imaginations to create value in an otherwise meaningless world (Rosowski, Voyage). …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon: The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Margaret Wolfit

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In May 1869 George Eliot received what she described as "a really noble letter from the American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe full of admiration of Silas Marner The Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede" and although they never met, there seems to have been some deep affinity of feeling between these two eminent women that drew them closely together in spite of diversity of intellectual tastes.

In reply to that first letter George Eliot wrote; - "Letters are necessarily narrow and fragmentary, and when one writes on wide subjects, are likely to create more misunderstanding than illumination. But I …

Westminster Abbey Wreath-Laying- June 18th 1988, Jennifer Uglow

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In June 1856 George and Marian Lewes (for it would not yet be right to call her 'George Eliot') were staying in North Devon. While George was collecting specimens on the beach, Marian was preoccupied with work for the Westminster Review, her 'Belles Letters' column and her famous article on W. H. Riehl, 'The Natural History of German Life', which, she wrote, 'I worked at considerably a contretemps, despairing of its ever being worth anything', But by this day, the 18th June, she was enjoying a splendid sense of freedom and a desire to turn to a different world, as …

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

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Having been intrigued by the puzzle on P. 87 of the previous edition of the Review my mind has turned to anagrams (perhaps the Review should have a crossword puzzle - I enjoy a crossword puzzle!) but without any great success. Trying "George Eliot" produces various unpromising words like "tiger" and "girl", but nothing very relevant. If only there were an "n" Eng. Lit. would appear quite satisfactory.

Turning to the name Adams, again I find nothing very relevant. Kathleen is surely not "sad" about the undertaking she embarked on more than 20 years ago, though she may feel she …

To Educate Or Not To Educate: Patterns For Women In George Eliot's Novels, Linda K. Robertson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Throughout her novels, George Eliot points out the deplorable state of education for women in the nineteenth century and the effects that poor education has upon the individual. Only limited schooling, if any, was available to girls whose parents could not afford to pay substantial sums, and too much schooling for girls was commonly viewed as unnecessary and even dangerous. In addition, schools generally spent a large proportion of their time teaching various "accomplishments" and very little on more academic subjects. Characters in most of Eliot's novels reflect common perceptions on education for women and illustrate the undesirable results of …