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The Twenty-Fourth George Eliot Memorial Lecture: George Eliot And The Furniture Of The House Of Fiction, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In a letter to Martha Jackson of March 1841 the young Marian Evans, at the age of twenty- one, reflects on the way that a person's immediate surroundings help determine the impression that he or she makes on others:

I suppose we are all loved (or despised) a little for the sake of our circumstances as well as for our qualities .... What extrinsic charm have /, to make people care for me a little more then my qualities might deserve? Certainly none from the landscape about me, and as little from the carpets and curtains and other recommendations of …

George Eliot: A Biography, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is a massive study, what the author calls 'a topic for a biography' (x). It occupied four years of his time, during which he obviously saturated himself in his subject, her period, her circle, her letters and all the contiguous material requisite for a full investigation. The result in the mass is curiously unsatisfactory. To adapt Henry James's celebrated dictum on Middlemarch, this is not a treasure house of detail but it is an indifferent whole. Undigested and indigestible, it reminds me of the Empress Messalina's infamous innuendo (according to Juvenal) that after a night spent in the brothels …

'Dear Cara': A Newly Discovered Letter, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

At the beginning of the year a donation was made to Coventry's Herbert Art Gallery and Museum of a box of papers relating to the Fridlanders, a nineteenth-century Coventry watch-making family. Annie Fridlander was a friend of Charles and Caroline (known as Cara) Bray and of Cara's sister, Sara Hennell.1t was not surprising, therefore, to find that some of the letters in the box were written by them to Annie. What was quite unexpected was to discover a tiny envelope containing a short letter from Marian Evans (George Eliot) to Cara Bray, her beloved Coventry friend.

The envelope and letter …

The Dead Hand In Middlemarch, David Clifford

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Edward Casaubon dies early in Book V of Middlemarch. Occurring where it does, it effectively bisects the novel; and indeed, it is a pivotal event in Dorothea's history. His will erects her central dilemma. She faces a choice, forced upon her by her deceased husband, between his money and his cousin. The significant detail is that even in death, Mr. Casaubon continues to exert control over the options open to Dorothea, and the locus of that control is her property.

The title of Book V, 'The Dead Hand', is taken as referring explicitly to this immortal control by Mr. Casaubon …

University Of Adelaide, Seventeenth Australasian Victorlian Studies Conference Report, Rosalind De Sailly

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The seventeenth conference of the Australasian Victorian Studies Association was held at the University of Adelaide in February 1996. The conference theme 'The Victorians and Science' inspired several papers on George Eliot's relation to matters scientific.

Barbara Garlick (Senior Tutor, University of Queensland) examined passages from Daniel Deronda in her paper 'George Eliot's Optics and the "Solidity of Objects'“. Dr. Garlick premissed her account of Eliot's optics on Lewes's theory of vision as a psychological act which interiorizes the external world according to intuitions and ideas. Vision was used to demonstrate how ways of seeing structure the narrative as they …

Review Of George Eliot: A Life, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Fifty years after John Cross's hagiographic George Eliot's Life as Related in her Letters and Journals (1885), Gordon Haight planned a more forthright biography but first found that it would be necessary to re-edit those letters and journals expurgated by Cross and search out material unavailable or unmentioned by Cross. The results was first the seven volumes of The George Eliot Letters in 1954-55 and, in 1968, George Eliot: A Biography, the then definitive life. More material has been coming to light since, notably (but not only) the two supplemental volumes of the Letters Haight added in 1978, and there …

Annual Report 1995, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I would like to begin this report with something exciting to say but Annual General Meetings, with which our year inevitably begins, are never exciting events. In 1995 it all went smoothly - the only change being the retirement of Kathleen Porter as Vice Chairman and the appointment of Joan Bunn in her place. After the business meeting John Smith, Curator of Stamford Museum, who had closely followed the filming of the TV Middlemarch in the town, showed us his collection of slides and entertained us with an interesting commentary. Middlemarchmania had not quite died.

In March we heard of …

American Branch Report, Linda K. Robertson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The American branch of the George Eliot Fellowship met for dinner at Stetson's Restaurant in Chicago on December 28, 1995. There was no formal programme but the evening included the traditional toast, the delivery of greetings from members who were unable to attend, and lively conversation. Those in attendance were Harriet Williams, Shoshana Knapp, Gail Elizabeth Korn, Jean Armold, and Linda K. Robertson. Gail Korn and Jean Arnold volunteered to prepare Special Session proposals for the 1996 Modem Language Association meeting in Washington, D.C. 19

Late-Victorian Plans For A George Eliot Memorial Library, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On 5 March 1896 a paragraph appeared in the Daily News from a correspondent who wrote:

Will you allow me through your columns to appeal to the countless admirers of one of England's greatest teachers and of the world's most perfect artists? That portion of 'Leafy Warwickshire' in the midst of which little Marian Evans drew her first inspiration, literally beneath some of the very oaks which formed part of the classic Forest of Arden, has of late years proved to be a teeming storehouse of mineral wealth, and a large and vastly increasing industrial population at the present moment …

Hardy And Eliot: The Eye Of Narcissus' Looking-Glass, Nicola Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Hardy was both surprised and offended by the comparisons made between Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) and the novels of George Eliot; indeed, several critics went so far as to ascribe this new work to the acknowledged master in a complimentary manner but this failed to placate the aspiring newcomer. But most galling of all was the response it elicited from Henry James. From the very beginning, James took exception to the formal technique adopted by the writer who would become his greatest rival. He offered the most acerbic and derogatory commentary when he defined Hardy's first major success …

Geoffrey Chaucer's House Of Fame: From Authority To Experience, Victoria Frantseva

Masters Theses

Geoffrey Chaucer's House of Fame is one of the most provocative dream-vision poems written in the fourteenth century. In many ways, it continues to present a serious problem of interpretation to students of medieval poetry. Many critics have tried to arrive at a singular cohesive theory explaining meaning and defining the genre of the House of Fame. However, these attempts have failed and the poem's enigma endures, probably for all time.

The House of Fame seems to elicit many different responses from its readers. While opinions of the poem may vary, the points of argument generally concern the following areas: …

New Plays For Old : Jonson's Orton And Orton's Jonson, Josephine M. Wayling

Theses : Honours

The aim of this thesis is to ascertain to what extent Ben Jonson's play Volpone can be constructed through Joe Orton's play Loot. I will attempt to discover how far Loot can be said to be of use in re-examining Volpone in a different light since the emergence of Orton's brand of comic drama. I shall start by looking at influences such as Erasmus and his particular brand of humour as created in The Praise of Folly, and the implications for comedy that it presents in the form of the mock encomium. The relevance of "not what …

Transforming A Legend: Significance Of The Wandering Jew In Shelley's Work, Matthew D. Landrus

Masters Theses

Although Percy Bysshe Shelley has been recognized for his use of the Wandering Jew, critics have failed to produce a definitive work examining how this biblical legend figures into an understanding of the poet's changing world views. Since a comprehensive analysis was lacking, I studied Shelley's treatment of the Wandering Jew in each work that included the character to determine whether or not a relationship existed between Shelley's management of the figure and the poet's world beliefs. This thesis records the results of that study.

In his earliest works involving the Wandering Jew--those written between 1810-1812--Shelley's treatment of the Wandering …

Chaucer's Use Of The Absalom Archetype In The Knight's Tale And In The Miller's Tale, Sharon Hardin

Masters Theses

Although Chaucer did not write The Canterbury Tales until after the death of Edward III, Chaucer's youth was spent in the company (albeit on the fringes) of the war-like king and his war-like sons. Surely, as the young Chaucer performed his duties and perhaps read stories or listened to the gossip spread by servants and courtiers, such as the account of Edward's having ravished a defenseless woman, impressions formed in Chaucer's mind. Perhaps such rumors as that Edward's son Lancaster had designs on his father's throne added to and solidified those impressions into opinion, and a character type was born, …

A Woman Alone And Writing: Anti-Ideology And Artistic Irony In Writings Of Mary Shelley, Delores Archaimbault

Masters Theses

This study focuses upon the letters, journals and selected fiction of Mary Shelley and reveals that Shelley engages in the processes of anti-ideology and artistic irony to help her explore gender identity. To show her consistent use of these processes, I juxtapose excerpts from her letters and journals with excerpts from her fiction. The fiction selections are narrowed to three: Frankenstein, Mathilda and The Last Man. In addition, I examine her writing and her use of anti-ideology and artistic irony relative to the influences of her significant others: her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, her father William Godwin and her …

Report Of A Lecture On "George Eliot At The National Portrait Gallery", Elizabeth Gundrey

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In an excellent lecture John Cooper of the National Portrait Gallery showed all the authenticated portraits of George Eliot, contrasting them with those of other women writers of the time such as Charlotte Bronte and Agnes Strickland and quoting contemporaries' views on how good a likeness each was.

The portraits included an early silhouette given to the Gallery by a niece of John Cross; an 1842 watercolour given by Caroline Bray, too delicate to be put on public display; D'Albert Durade's Geneva portrait, painted when she was still mourning her father and struggling with religious doubts; the celebrated Samuel Lawrence …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon: The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A friendly neighbor, who knew I was fond of “old things”, recently offered to let me look at a yellowing, crisply fragile newspaper that was in her possession. Unfolded, the crimbling broadsheet proved to be a copy of the Daily Mail for Wednesday, 23 June 1897- the issue commemorating Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. I gingerly perused it, enjoying it as a period curiosity without really expecting to see anything of specific interest- until I got to page seven, which presented an article headed “Women in the Queen’s Reign. Some Who Have Made Victorian History”.

The piece- which is about thirty …

Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Garden, Nuneaton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

For those of you who don't know who I am, I am currently the Managing Agent on the Arbury Estate, where I am lucky enough to live in South Farm, which will be familiar to you all as the birthplace of Mary Ann Evans.

I arrived at Arbury approximately 183 years after Robert Evans, Mary Ann's father, who was also the Agent on the Estate and on whom it is my intention to reflect today. Robert was born in 1773, the son of a carpenter. He had a limited early education in the local school which was run by Bartle …

Transfigured Rites In Seventeenth Century Poetry (Book Review), Sidney Gottlieb

Communication, Media & The Arts Faculty Publications

Book review by Sidney Gottlieb.

Chambers, A. B. Transfigured Rites in Seventeenth Century Poetry. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992. ISBN 9780826208088

Orts 36,1995, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

The new owners of 'The Farm', Huntly—MacDonald's childhood home—are the Johannesens from California as announced in the last issue of 'Orts'. Andy and Debbie are settling happily into life in a small town in northern Scotland, according to reports and their own correspondence. They welcome visitors and overnight guests as far as the fairly limited accommodation allows, and can supply a leaflet giving their charges. Running the place as a guest-house is not of course their main aim! From a letter written in June we learn: "Every transaction has gone smoothly. Our great and glorious Lord has seen that we …

Orts 35, 1995, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

An almost forgotten trace of the MacDonald family is still visible in Asheville, North Carolina, U.S.A. This is a weatherworn stone plinth, part of a memorial to Louise, the wife of George MacDonald's son Ronald, in Riverside Cemtery. Ronald had become headmaster of a local episcopal school in Asheville; Louise was taken ill soon after they arrived in America and died not long after. Lilia MacDonald came over in 1890 to act as her brother's housekeeper.

The subject has been investigated by Dale Slusser who lives in Asheville and hopes to have a plaque put on the plinth which still …

Orts 37, 1995, The George Macdonald Society

Orts: The George MacDonald Society Newsletter

The 1995 A.G.M. was held on 13 October, this time in Freda Levson's ever-hospitable flat in West London. John Docherty, Secretary for many years, has now resigned. The members are deeply grateful for his tireless hard work over these years, when he played a vital part in the Society's development, not least in keeping people in contact with our work in this country and overseas. On this occasion one visitor from outside England was present, J. J. Flynn from California, one of the American publishers of MacDonald reprints. Our distinguished poet-member, John HeathStubbs, attended also.

Beyond Irony: The Unnamable's Appropriation Of Its Critics In A Humorous Reading Of The Text, Jennifer Jeffers

English Faculty Publications

In traditional Beckett criticism, the most conventional interpretation of the narrator's activity in The Unnamable posits that the narrative is attempting to establish "his" own self-identity, but "[h]is search for self-knowledge has failed because it has produced only fiction" (Solomon 83). Another variety of this interpretation poses the Unnamable's dilemma in Existential language: "Existence affirms merely that something is; essence denotes what it is ... By the time we reach The Unnamable, the collapse of essence is virtually complete; the voice is a mere existence crying out that it exists" (Levy 104). As Dennis A. Foster argues in his Lacanian …

D.H. Lawrence's "Struggle For Verbal Consciousness": From Women In Love To Psychoanalysis And The Unconscious And Fantasia Of The Unconscious, Yvonne Martha Weatherby

Theses Digitization Project

No abstract provided.

"Dismal Loneliness": George Eliot, Auguste Comte And "The Lifted Veil", Judith Siford

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'The Lifted Veil' is a curious novella from an author who made the organic form so much her own, focusing as it does upon actions which continually interrupt and fragment the narrative; with its emphasis on the supernatural, on bizarre pseudo-scientific experiments, attempted murder and gothic horror it seems out of place in the canon of a maker of 'realist' fictions. Yet bizarre though this tale undoubtedly is, it is not merely the mental aberration from an author under stress that Blackwood supposed it to be.'

In 1859, the year she first offered it for publication, Eliot had been diffident …

Thou Shalt Not Read: Maggie's Arrested Development In The Mills On The Floss, Karen E. Hottle

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Mill on the Floss opens and closes with visions of a girl out of place - initially in a dream and finally in a grave. In between, this lost soul tries to find her way in the world, and she often uses books as her guides. While books give the young Maggie a certain freedom, her status as a woman in the society into which she is born forces her to read in certain ways which constrain and eventually destroy her.

The opening scenes of the novel establish Maggie's place in the hierarchy of learning. Mr. Tulliver's first words …

The Transformation Of Rage: Mourning And Creating In George Eliot's Fiction, Peggy Fitzhugh Johnstone

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The thesis of this book is as follows. In her early life George Eliot experienced a number of bereavements: the deaths of her baby twin siblings in 1821, after which her mother withdrew emotionally from her life; her mother's own death in 1836, when she was sixteen, and her father's death in 1849. Failing to complete 'the mourning process' adequately, and experiencing unconscious 'rage' as a consequence, Eliot had to work through these and other traumatic experiences as an adult, using her novel-writing as a therapy. Her own unconscious aggression comes out in the aggression of her heroines, of which …

Charles Christian Hennell And George Eliot: Human And Narrative Affinities, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On 13 November 1841 the twenty-two year old Marian Evans wrote to her then mentor Maria Lewis 'My whole soul has been engrossed in the most interesting of all inquiries for the last few days, and to what results my thoughts may lead, I know not - possibly to one that will startle you'.1 On 16 September 1847 ,just over a year after the publication of her translation of Strauss's Life of Jesus Marian wrote to her close friend Sarah Hennell, whose brother's An Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity (2nd edition, 1841) she had just re-read 'with delight and …

The Twenty-Third George Eliot Memorial Lecture- 1994, Canon Michael Sadgrove

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Sunday, 2 January 1842, Mary Ann Evans's father wrote in his diary: 'Went to Trinity Church in the forenoon" Miss Lewis went with me. Mary Ann did not go. I stopd the sacrament (sic) and Miss Lewis stopd also.' Two weeks later, again: 'Went to church in the forenoon. Mary Ann did not go to church'.

Robert Evans was perhaps principally interested in making sure that his daughter behaved as was proper for a middle class young woman with eligible prospects. Her scruples may have concerned him less. But there is no disguising the genuine grief he felt at …

New George Eliot Letters At The British Library, William Baker, Donald Hawes

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The British Library Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts New Series 1981-1985 (2 vols., London: The British Library, 1994), records the acquisition of new George Eliot letters to its holdings.' Its Index lists under 'Cross nee Evans ... "George Eliot''' three items: 'Letter to J. T. Delane from George Eliot, 1859.61891, f.88'; 'Letter to E. L. Stanley from George Eliot, 1869.61891, f.90'; 'Letters to Florence Hill from George Eliot, [1869-?]- 1873.61891, ff.92-101' (p. 410).

The text of George Eliot's [30 November 1859] letter of protest to Delane, Editor of the London Times, about Newby, the publisher's 'issuing a work under …