Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

George Eliot And American Films, George V. Griffith

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

To Kathleen Adams t discussion of George Eliot film adaptations (Review, 1977), I would Iike to add two interesting items omitted and a few comments. Other than that piece and a few brief remarks about George Eliot theatrical adaptations in a column in the London Illustrated News (Mar. 5, 1927), nothing has been written about Eliot on stage and screen. The subject deserves more treatment.

The silent era of filmmaking in America coincided with a period in American culture when English "classics lt possessed a certain cachet that made them good properties for an entertainment industry with aspirations to something …

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

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

That this last year has been of particular significance in the life of the Fellowship needs no emphasis from me. NewsIetters throughout the year, and reports in this Review, will have informed those members who for reasons of distance or otherwise have not been able to take part, that much of note has happened.

I have had the greatest pleasure, in every case with my wife Marjorie, in taking part in some of the events of the year, culminating in the unveiling on the 22nd March of what is, without doubt, a most worthy memorial to George Eliot in the …

Book Reviews: Female Friendships And Communities; A Mid-Victorian Feminist, Barabara Leigh Smith Bodichon; George Eliot And Blackmail, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Pauline Nestor's book traces the prominence, the emergence of women writers by the mid-nineteenth century, and the making of a community available to themselves. As she puts it, they were banding together, for 'women were no longer merely victims of the pen, but were wielding it themselves.' She comments particularly on Mrs. Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte and the unifying power of maternity in her fiction. In the essays of the period there was a 'prolonged discussion of women's capacity for friendship'. Pauline Nestor is particularly strong on Mrs. Gaskell, tracing her modesty and grace, her ability to get on …

Speech At The Unveiling Of George Eliot Statue, Jonathan Ouvry

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Putting up a statue has been, for some two or three thousand years, a favourite way of keeping alive the memory of a person worthy to be remembered. Whatever the reason, it must be the case that only the most exceptional talents are now memorialised in this way. It must, I think, be particularly exceptional for the subject of a statue to be female; I mean, of course, a statue as a memorial - in terms of pure art statuary must almost invariably be female. Leaving aside Greek goddesses, Queen Victoria and, looking a little to the south, Lady Godiva, …

Obituary: Gordon S. Haight, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Admirers of George Eliot owe an immense debt to Gordon S. Haight for his work on George Eliot, her life and her works. No-one studying the Nuneatonborn novelist can afford to miss the nine volumes of her letters which came out over a period of 24 years, edited by Haight, and yet it was aImost by chance that he became so involved that the letters grew into a life's work. In 1933 he joined Yale University where he had graduated ten years earlier. That same year he became interested in the collection of George Eliot letters at Yale and set …

George Eliot Unveiled, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The excitement associated with the unveiling of John Letts' beautiful statue of George Eliot began for the four officers two days before the ceremony. On March 20th she travelled from the bronze casters in High Wycombe, somewhat ungracefully, on the back of a lorry! The plinth, all clean and bright, was ready and waiting, as was a very large crane, hired from Coventry, and causing a traffic warden slight concern as it was parked on double yellow lines; but, happily, she joined in the spirit of the day, and no parking ticket was issued. The press were there from the …

Annual Report 1985

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

With an awareness of something positive to do, the Fellowship entered 1985 with a feeling of optimism, and with our thoughts very much occupied with the George Eliot Statue Appeal. By the beginning of the year, and six months in from the launching of the appeal, we were more then halfway to our target, and a lot of work continued to go on to raise the rest of the money and to negotiate all that was necessary in connection with the erection of the statue. These negotiations continued throughout the year in conjunction with Nuneaton Borough Council. The Chief Executive …

At The Grave Of George Eliot, Amy Clampitt

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Laid in unconsecrated Eround, a scandal

still-note how good Gerard Hopkins

recoiled from what a queer, awkward girl,

frail-shouldered, massive, rickety,

volcanic" out of an unconsecrated

attachment, a marriage that was

no marriage (one would have added,

till opprobrium intervened, but

something better), to a pockmarked

lightweight of a drama critic, saw blossom:

this domestic improbability, this

moonftower. They were happy.

Happiness: that-as it always has been-was

the scandal. As for the unembarrassed

pursuit of same, run giddily

amok, by now, among the lit-up

purlieus of a game show (died

of a conniption, beaming), time

spared her that, though not …

Address By Margaret Wolfit, Margaret Wolfit

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'The Quiet Conquest' is the title of the Huguenot exhibition celebrating Huguenot Heritage Year - 300 years since the revoking of the Edict of Nantes - currently showing at the London Museum.

The origins and earliest application of the term Huguenot, we are told, have always been and remain somewhat obscure. The word may derive from 'Eidgenoss', meaning confederal, a word used in Geneva where John Calvin and many Huguenots settled. Other explanations for the word belong to the world of myths - a 16th century Catholic apologist, for example, apparently suggested that John Calvin nightly summoned a devil named …

An Evening With Steve Race

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Take a mixture of gentle humour, superb professionalism, excellent timing and a love of music of many a Music' programme has been a much loved public figure for many years, but if his audience at the Arts Centre were expecting the same pleasant, relaxed man on stage, they were probably delighted to discover that he is even more pleasant and more relaxed than they had anticipated. From the moment he arrived on stage until he left it, he had his audience in the palm of his hand. They reacted instantly to him, and the pleasure this gave to him probably …

Book Review: "A Delicious Effervescence Of The Mind", Gabriel Woolf, Rosalind Shanks

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

"A delicious effervescence of the mind"? It is not a quality that one immediately associates with George Eliot, whose name and countenance promise more of the sturdier attributes and less of the "fizz". Yet in a brilliant recital by Gabriel Wooir and Rosalind Shanks, many sparkling bubbles of wit sprang to life. Her love of jokes was recalled from books she laughed over in childhood, and the lively amusement she gleaned from the foibles of folk emerged from the perhaps unlikely pages of "Janet's Repentance". Bartle Massey from Adam Bede was not unexpected, but less predictable was the quick, dry …

Treasurer's Report- 1984

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Statement of Accounts for 1984 is quite straightforward and little comment is needed. Although 'we had fewer members, with the result that income from subscriptions was less than in the previous year, we were much encouraged to receive donations of £96.47p. We are grateful to the Life Members who, having joined the Fellowship when subscriptions were low, have now made extra payments. We hope this is an indication of approval of what we are doing and we welcome their generous help.

Profits on most of our activities were satisfactory, especially on Gabriel Woolf's Readings, without which our finances would …

Book Review: The Mills On The Floss, J.C. Trewin

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

“George Eliot" seems to be fashionable at the moment. I gather that Silas Marner is planned for television. Now Margaret Wolfit, Sir Donald's actress daughter, has managed to get her single-handed stage version of The Mill On The Floss into two hours.

For some it is the most immediately appealing of all the books; and it is good to see its problems yield to so direct an approach.

Margaret Wolfit has the right kind of modesty. She does not approach her protean task as if she were launching a battleship, but talks her way quietly into the narrative, establishing everyone …

Address Given By Revd. B.A. Ritchie At The Unveiling And Dedication Of A Memorial To George Eliot, B.A. Ritchie

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There is no difference in kind between our human selves and those particular human beings who we have learnt, throughout our history. to call the artist, the thinker, the hero, the saint . The difference is not one of kind, it is rather one of intensity of experience. At the highest level in our culture the artist. the thinker. the hero. the saint are those who. according to one of the leading theologians of our age, have ventured on our behalf on a journey of intensification. It is. of course. a journey that, to a greater or lesser degree. we …

The 1984 George Eliot Memorial Lecture: Love, Knowledge And Narration: George Eliot On Other Minds, Richard Freadman, D. Phil

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'It was by loving them ... that he knew them; it was not by knowing them that he loved'1 - such was Henry James's legendary conclusion about Balzac and his characters. James's point was simple but important: Balzac was, in his view, able to invest his characters with a special freedom and opaqueness because he loved them as one might love another person. They didn't spring complete and transparent from a fictional blueprint. ²

James makes a similar point about Trollope, a writer in whom he elsewhere finds fault. If Trollope 'was a knowing psychologist, he was so by grace; …

Mill On The Floss: The Author's Tone Of Voice

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is a breathtaking evening at the Fortune Theatre, in the sense that we come to share the actress's evident inhalation of the novel and exhalation of it - all in two hours for us.

It can hardly be described as breathtaking entertainment since "The Mill on the Floss" has, until its tragic end, all the characteristics of its kind least suited, you may think, to theatrical adaptation. So the achievement of Margaret Wolfit in translating George Eliot's supposedly autobiographical novel to the stage (or to the needs of a solitary performer) is the more remarkable.

For it introduces everyone …

George Eliot's Theory Of The Novel, Richard Freadman

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

By the time George Eliot began work on Scenes of Clerical Life late in 1856, she already had in mind a pretty clear idea of what a novel ought to be. Here her work for the Westminster Review and the Leader had been of great assistance, for it had enabled her to assess many contemporary novels as well as numerous works of historical, sociological, philosophical and topical interest. The 'theory' of the novel that resulted was not as comprehensive or integrated as the historic one formalised in Henry James's Prefaces fifty years later, and it clearly underwent alteration as George …

The 1985 George Eliot Memorial Lecture, Michael Bell

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

At the heart of George Eliot's fiction is an abiding concern for truth of feel i ng. The al truism of a Dorothea, as much as the egoism of a Rosamund, can lead to a disastrous failure in self-knowledge and in understanding of the world. Eliot, of course, was concerned with the outer worlds of nature, of society and of history, yet her approach is always through the emotional perceptions of specific individuals. Several of the great mid-Victorian novelists shared this belief that large social questions were to be approached through the issue of right feeling. Most notably Dickens sought …

Book Review: Forms Of Feeling In Victorian Fiction, Kathleen Porter, Barbara Hardy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The art of representing feeling within a fictional character, and of eliciting response from the reader, was well understood by the great Victorian novelists. Their methods were so successful that the characters they created and the emotional experiences they described affect today's readers as powerfully as the readers of their own time.

In this study, Professor Barbara Hardy examines the forms and languages used by various authors to represent feeling, to analyse it, and to manipulate readers' responses. She begins by considering the techniques of some earlier writers from which developed the more 'realistic' Victorian forms of fiction. She chooses …

Dani El Deronda : George Eliot's "Negro Novel", John Stott

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Daniel Deronda, G.H. Lewes once rather ingenuously explained, was "all about English ladies and gentlemen with the scene laid in Wiltshire" (Letters 6:136)² ... and although the novel is evidently "about" far more than that, Lewes' words are a useful reminder that Deronda gains his entree to the world of the novel as a gentleman, the ward of Sir Hugo Mallinger, and not as a political figure: a believer in a Palestinian homeland for the Jews. I t is necessary for the novel that he believe in something, of course; as R. T. Jones has commented, "In order to …

The Quality Of Humour In 'Brother Jacob', Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'Brother Jacob' was written in 1860. but not published until 1864. some months after Romola had completed its run in the Cornhill Magazine. At first sight it appears to be an undistinguished piece of work. with the omniscient author well in evidence. The opening is heavy-handed, a deliberate and sententious humour being levelled at the reader:

Among the many fatalities attending the bloom of young desire. that of blindly taking to the confectionery line has not. perhaps, been sufficiently considered.

Fortunately, this is prelude to a fascinating story which has a comparable psychological insight to that shown in 'The Lifted …

On Location With 'Silas Marner', Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

If you have ever regarded the life of an actor to be a glamorous one, it would have been something of an eye-opener to have visited the location of the BBC Television film of 'Silas Marner' on a cold March day. The day had followed one of almost continuous rain, and I have never seen such mud, nor so much of it. The setting was in the Cotswolds, chosen because this area remains one of the last almost totally unspoilt regions in England. The production team, eager to be as authentic as possible, had travelled the length and breadth of …

Ignorance And Power: George Eliot's Attack On Professional Incompetence, Linda K. Robertson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Throughout both her essays and her fiction, George Eliot shows little patience with ignorance. in the epigraph to chapter 21 of Daniel Deronda she states, "It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance?" (bk. 1) The failure of an individual to fulfill his role in society with a reasonable level of competence because of inadequate knowledge or an inability to apply information properly is a matter for concern. Beginning with her earliest fiction, Eliot uses characterisation and plot to demonstrate her contempt for a wide spectrum of …

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

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The first year of my presidency of the George Eliot Fellowship has now safely passed, and how quickly it went! I have much enjoyed it, and though, for reasons of distance and available time, I have missed many of the most interesting functions with which the newsletter has tempted me from time to time, I have attended, with my wife Marjorie, the annual wreath-laying ceremony at Westminster Abbey which was a great pleasure as always, and the Birthday Luncheon in November which we very much enjoyed.

We were particularly sorry to miss performances on behalf of the Fellowship by Margaret …

Book Review: Frederic Harrison: The Vocations Of A Positivist, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This book, the result of more than half a lifetime's research, provides a much-needed insight into the nature of English Positivism and one of its leading disciples, Frederic Harrison. I t opens excitingly with the twenty-three-year-old Harrison meeting the ageing but wonderfully fluent Auguste Comte, and being so mesmerised that the interview changed the course of his life and gave him his major 'vocation', the spreading of the Positivist gospel. It is a fascinating story, not so much for the positivism but because of the sheer variety of the man and his interests and indestructible energy. Martha Vogeler's great merit …

Book Review: Selections From George Eliot's Letters, Leon Drucker

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is a most welcome and meticulous distillation of Dr. Haight's The George Eliot Letters in nine volumes, which in this age of the video cassette will be inaccessible even in many good reference libraries. My only reservation about the editing of this very readable book of some 650 letters in 560 pages is that the letters themselves are not numbered. I certainly commend the informative headnotes above each letter, though sometimes the longer the letter, the briefer the note, which proves that Dr. Haight is never one to obtrude between himself and his heroine.

The first sentence of the …

Toast For The 1985 George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In proposing this toast I thought I would like to look briefly at George Eliot's real children, and before anyone, sensing an even bigger mid-Victorian scandal than she created by Iiving with George Henry Lewes, asks 'Did she have any?', let me define what I mean by 'real'. I do not mean G. H. Lewes's boys, though she was a devoted mother to them in the best sense of the word, writing to them, being caring and concerned at all times, nursing one in his young manhood dedicatedly until his premature death. I do not mean Elma Stuart, whom George …

The George Eliot Fellowship Review, Kathleen Adams, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Cover Design By William Adams M.A.

The Editors do not necessarily agree with the views expressed by contributors, nor does the George Eliot Fellowship accept responsibility for such views.

THE REVIEW is produced photographically by TOPSHOP, a training organization for the young unemployed in Coventry.

No part of the REVIEW may be reproduced without the permission of the Editors.

Contributions are invited for the 1986 issue. They may be on any subject relating to George Eliot’s work, life, family or friends. They should be of up to 1,500 words in length, and it is preferred that footnotes are used only …

Book Review: The Clarendon Edition Of The Novels Of George Eliot (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1984), Richard Freadman

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In writing Daniel Deronda George Eliot hoped 'to rouse the imagination of men and women to a vision of human claims in those races of their fellow-men who most differ from them in customs and beliefs' . Typically, her aspiration was suffused with doubt. She wished the novel to be seen as an integrated work of art but worried about its aesthetic reception; and she feared that the' Jewish element' would elicit an unenthusiastic response. On both counts her apprehensiveness has been proven prophetic. Daniel Deronda remains one of the most controversial of the great English novels, its extraordinary fusion …

George Eliot Country, Amy Clampitt

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

From this Midland scene - glum slag heaps, barge canals, gray sheep, the vivid overlap of wheat field and mustard hillside like out-of-season sunshine, the crabbed silhouette of oak trees (each joint a knot, each knot a principled demurral: tough, arthritic, stubborn as the character of her own father) - fame, the accretion of a Pyrrhic happiness, had exiled her to London, with its carriages and calling cards, its screaming headaches.

Griff House- dear old Griff, she wistfully apostrophized it - in those days still intact, its secrets kept, has now been grafted to a motel-cum-parking-lot beside the trunk road, …