Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Ghosts And Angels In The House: Cecilia De Noel And The Search For Faith In The Late Nineteenth Century, Christine Sutphin

English Faculty Scholarship

The nineteenth century, so often thought of as the age of scientific theory, technological change, and realism in fiction, abounds with supernatural phenomena. While some readers and observers of culture could define practices and texts related to the supernatural as pernicious because irreligious or unscientific, others could appreciate ghost stories at least as imaginative entertainment resulting in pleasurable fear but not otherwise significant. However, these stories can be read as serious and profound explorations of the unknown and the moral, philosophical, and spiritual questions with which we continue to struggle.

Of all the ghost stories published during the period, perhaps …

The Weight Of “Glory”: Emily Dickinson, George Eliot, And Women’S Issues In Middlemarch, Megan Armknecht

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

No abstract provided.

Ceasing To Run Underground: 20th-Century Women Writers And Hydro-Logical Thought, Annie M. Cranstoun

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Starting from two central ecopoetic convictions—the constitutive role of environment in human experience (and vice versa), and text’s ability to connect with the world—this dissertation then moves in a different direction from most ecocritical projects. Instead of looking at the ways literary representation flows back into nature in the forms of attitude, praxis, and policy, this study focuses on the earlier part of the loop: the emergence of text from environment, particularly its aquatic parts, via the faculty of the imagination. In its scrutiny of images that spring directly from matter and its faith in the concept of a personal …

Two Sequels To Daniel Deronda, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The two sequels of my title are a seven-page satirical squib in Mr. Punch's Pocket-Book for 1877 entitled 'Daniel Deronda, Book IX',' and a short novel or long story of around 50,000 words - much the same length as 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story' - Gwendolen: or, Reclaimed: A Sequel to Daniel Deronda published in Boston, Mass., in 1878. The novel was published anonymously but there is one edition published by William F. Gill with a variant title page giving the author as one Anna Clay Beecher/ whose identity remains a mystery.' Both these texts have been contextualized, …

On Writing Neo-Victorian Fiction: James Miranda Barry (1999) And Sophie And The Sibyl: A Victorian Romance (2015), Patricia Duncker

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

My first historical novel - James Miranda Barry (1999) was not born a Neo-Victorian novel, but became one. And it had a very personal link to my own life. Barry was a nineteenth-century colonial doctor and medical reformer, who had a very successful and colourful career in remote parts of the Empire. He spent an important period of his life in Jamaica, then a British colony, during the 1830s, taking care of the army garrison stationed on the island to protect the interests of the Crown and put down the numerous slave revolts. The British maintained a regiment there until …

Editors' Note

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This year's issue of the George Eliot Review is the first for more than two decades that has not been shaped by the editorial hand of Beryl Gray. Beryl joined Graham Handley as co-editor in 1992 and continued until 2015, playing the leading role in making the Review more polished and professional. Working with Beryl was always a pleasure and an instruction, and the editors would like to mark her retirement by expressing their gratitude for, and warm appreciation of, her long service. 97

In Memoriam, Bill Adams (1923-2016), John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

With the passing of Bill Adams at the age of 92 we have truly reached the end of an era. Bill had a close association with the George Eliot Fellowship for fifty years and only two days before his death on 21 June he had laid a wreath ih Nuneaton, as the Fellowship's guest of honour, and after his speech enjoyed chatting at the museum tea room with guests and members, some of whom he had known for decades.

Between 'Silly Novels' And Vegetation Myths: George Eliot's Subversive Use Of The Two Suitors Convention In Middlemarch, Anna Gutowska

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Take a woman's head, stuff it with a smattering of philosophy and literature chopped small, and with false notions of society baked hard, let it hang over a desk a few hours every day, and serve up hot in feeble English, when not required . (Eliot 1992:305)

'Silly Novels by Lady Novelists', George Eliot's vitriolic overview of popular novels of the 1850s, which is the source of the mock-recipe above, was published in 1856, shortly before Eliot started writing her first work of fiction, 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton' . More than ten years then passed before …

Barbara Hardy: Recollections, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The last time I saw Barbara Hardy was in November 2014, at the Middlemarch day held at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Senate House, London, when she gave a characteristically rich paper on Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot.' She had turned ninety that June, and while she was physically diminished and the voice less bell-like, her intonations and gestures were as ever, and her responses to questions as sharp.

Barbara Hardy On Dickens, Michael Slater

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

1970, the centenary year of Dickens's death, saw a flood of books published on the novelist including several by distinguished writers and critics ranging from F .R. Leavis to J. B. Priestley. One of the best, and most ground-breaking, of these latter was Barbara Hardy's The Moral Art of Dickens, published by the Athlone Press of the University of London. A collection of essays no more than 155 pages long, this book, elegantly and lucidly written like all of Barbara's work, was followed over the years by other critical studies from her pen that were to have a profound and …

Barbara Hardy In France, Alain Jumeau

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Barbara Hardy was a well-known figure among French Victorianists, probably because she had written on three at least of the major novelists of the period, Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot, not to forget Thomas Hardy and a few others.

As far as I am concerned, when I started researching on George Eliot in the early seventies, I found her book The Novels of George Eliot: A Study in Form particularly inspiring. At that time, most critical studies dealing with George Eliot were either concerned with the problem of realism or with a purely moral approach. The notion of form, which …

Chairman's Annual Report For 2015, John Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Another successful year' is always good to report, and is expected of a chairman. But it really was a terrific year for the Fellowship. The only damper was the slow, painfully slow progress on the Visitor Centre. I start with thanks to the Fellowship Council, strengthened in March by the election of Joy Hunter, Joy Redfem and Linda Mayne as full members. The George Eliot Essay Prize was won in 2015 by Jen Davis, and her essay appeared in last year's Review. On a more positive side, we think Whitbread is still committed to helping create a Visitor Centre; and …

An American Tribute, George Levine

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Isobel Armstrong begins her wonderful obituary for Barbara in the Guardian by noting how Barbara loved a good argument. No consideration of what Barbara Hardy has left us can get anywhere without recognition that she was a feisty woman. She was also an extraordinarily warm and inspiring one.

I owe her a lot. I first met her when, as an assistant professor still very wet behind the ears, I was lucky enough to spend a research year in London. Barbara took me in as though I were a serious scholar. She helped me find my way around London, was generous …

A Tribute To Barbara Hardy, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Barbara and I were close friends for over fifty years. She was the external examiner for my doctoral thesis in 1962, and from then on we met three or four times a year. I had previously reviewed The Novels of George Eliot and been impressed by the subtlety of the sustained investigation and the freshness of approach. It would be accurate to say that it was the major influence on my own studies in Victorian literature.

The Egyptian Sorcerer's Drop Of Ink In Adam Bede, Tapan Kumar Mukherjee

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance corner far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799.

Many scholars and critics have discussed the symbolic significance of the famous opening sentence of Adam Bede and related it to …

Conference Report: Annual George Eliot Conference: Daniel Deronda, Institute Of English Studies, 7 November 2015, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The conference opened with a characteristically rich and incisive paper by Barbara Hardy (Birkbeck), 'Re-Reading Daniel Deronda', which, sadly, was the last she was to deliver. In 'Daniel Deronda: The Two Halves That Were Never Whole', Isobel Armstrong (Birkbeck) presented a paper that will become part of her forthcoming book on Novel Politics: Democratic Imaginations and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. The 'Two Sequels to Daniel Deronda' discussed by John Rignall (Warwick) were a seven-page satirical squib in Mr Punch s Pocket-Book Jor 1877 entitled' Daniel Deronda Book IX', and a short novel, Gwendolen: or, Reclaimed: A Sequel to 'Daniel Deronda', published in …

Notes On Contributors

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Isobel Armstrong--John Burton--Marianne Burton--Delia da Sousa Correa--Patricia Duncker--Beryl Gray--Anna Gutowska--David Halliwell--Graham Handley--David Harper--Margaret Harris--Alain Jumeau--George Levine--Tapan Kumar Mukherjee--David Paterson--John Rignall--Eri Satoh--Michael Slater

Japanese Branch Report, Eri Satoh

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Saturday 28 November 2015 , the Nineteenth Annual Convention of The George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Obirin University.

In Janet Dempster's Footsteps: Reminiscence, David Harper

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The road from Trent Valley Station down towards the town centre curves gently past the row of horse-chestnuts in Bond Gate with their white candles. To the young boy arriving to take up residence in Nuneaton it promised something new, always interesting, always just out of reach.

From my earliest years I was a keen reader and felt the privilege of our local author's being one of the unquestioned greats; but it was George Eliot's north Warwickshire that initially attracted me, with The Mill on the Floss and Si/as Marner my favourites. This was reinforced by cycling the lanes for …

George Eliot's Afterlife: Dinitia Smith's The Honeymoon And Diana Souhami's Gwendolen, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In Middlemarch, chapter 20, as Dorothea Casubon sits musing in Rome, George Eliot presents one of the most traumatic honeymoons in fiction . With decorum, but unmistakably, Dorothea's sexual confusion is conveyed: however, she will live through widowhood to fulfilment as Dorothea Ladislaw. In contrast, George Eliot denies such fulfilment to Gwendolen Grandcourt in her next novel, Daniel Deronda. Where Dorothea's acceptance of Casaubon's proposal arises from idealistic ignorance, Gwendolen's decision to marry Grandcourt is morally flawed because of her awareness of his liaison with Lydia Glasher. There is no question about the physical consummation of the Grandcourt marriage, unlike …

Opera Review: Middlemarch In Spring, A Two-Act Opera By Composer Alien Shearer, Libretto By Claudia Stevens. First Performance, San Francisco, Z Space, March 19, 2015, Delia Da Sousa Correa, Michael Halliwell

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot consistently paid meticulous attention to matters of 'voice,' typically providing precise descriptions of her characters' voices, whether speaking or singing. Dorothea Brooke's harp-like voice is, of course, one of the qualities that first transfixes Will Ladislaw. Eliot's novels also resound with allusions to the operatic repertoire, from Caterina Sarti's impassioned renditions of Gluck in 'Mr Gilfil's Love Story' through to the elaborate operatic analogies that characterize the social milieu of Daniel Deronda. Despite these deeply-threaded affinities with opera, this is the first operatic adaptation of Middlemarch.

Remembering Barbara Hardy, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I don't compare my intellectual capacity with Lydgate's, but I do remember the precise moment when I knew that the study and potentially the teaching of 'English' were absolutely what I wanted to commit myself to for the rest of my working life, an already distinctly 'mature' student though I was. That moment occurred during my first year at Birkbeck, when Barbara was lecturing on Samuel Richardson's vast epistolary work of fiction, Clarissa, and showing how Clarissa's syntax is one of the ways in which the nature of her intelligence is distinguished from that of every other character in the …

Barbara Hardy (1924-2016), Isobel Armstrong

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This will be a very personal obituary because in losing Barbara I lost one of the profoundest friendships of my life. Her demanding intellectual boldness and buoyant strength of mind were immediately striking. But she also had a capacity for warmth and joy and enthusiasm, a warmth that was evident in the home environment she created: to enter her Earl's Court flat was like entering a Matisse painting - full of colour, oriental carpets, bowls and pots, and paintings by her daughter, Kate. I was lucky enough to experience that warmth and energy less than a week before she died, …

The Radical Candidature: Harold Transome's Political Motivation In Felix Holt, David Paterson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In late 1832 Great Britain was preparing for a special General Election. A Reform Bill passed in June had extended voting rights to the middle class, and parliamentary constituencies were re-distributed to enfranchise some of the larger industrial towns. Many Tory landed gentry had - unsuccessfully - opposed the change. So, early on in Felix Halt, the Radical, it comes as a surprise to the reader as well as his family when Harold Transome, heir to the Transome estates, declares his political allegiance. Just returned from abroad where he had made his fortune in business, he does not intend to …

Riding Horses In Middlemarch, Beryl Gary

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'George Eliot's Peculiar Passion' i the title of an article by Sarah Wintle, refers to the belief expressed by Katherine Mansfield in a letter to her husband, John Middleton Murry, that George Eliot had a 'peculiar passion for horses'. At the beginning of the article, Wintle quotes the part of Mansfield's letter which asks Murry to

think of some of [George Eliot's] pictures of country life - the breadth - the sense of sun lying on warm barns - great warm kitchens at twilight when the men came home from the fields - the feeling of beasts horses and cows …

Two Sequels To Daniel Deronda, John Rignaill

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The two sequels of my title are a seven page satirical squib in Mr Punch's Pocket-Book for 1877 entitled 'Daniel Deronda, Book IX',' and a short novel or long story of around 50,000 words - much the same length as 'Mr Gilfil's Love-Story' - Gwendolen: or, Reclaimed: A Sequel to Daniel Deronda published in Boston, Mass., in 1878. The novel was published anonymously but there is one edition published by William F. Gill with a variant title page giving the author as one Anna Clay Beecher/ whose identity remains a mystery.' Both these texts have been contextualized , discussed and …

'Woman's Freedom Lies In Choosing The Husband Who Is To Be Her Master': Existentialism And The Female Slave In Daniel Deronda, Marianne Burton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Various commentators have suggested that Daniel Deronda can be read as a text which espouses early existentialist principles, elevating the individual's search for personal truths above society's expectations and conceptions of duty. I am going to suggest that Deronda 's proto-existentialism is of particular interest when viewed as poised between nineteenth- and twentieth-century formulations of existentialism, the godly and the godless, and when Deronda's search is compared with the narratives of the female characters whose freedoms are more curtailed by social mores.

An Awakened Woman With A Room Of Her Own, Erica Garcia

Nebraska College Preparatory Academy: Senior Capstone Projects

In the early 1900’s, women were obviously being oppressed considering they lacked the right to vote, to an education, and to freedom. Through bold women who spoke out against the said oppression, women were able to work together to fight for equality. By digging deeper into the literature of the time period, the point of view of an oppressed woman is more easily seen and can therefore be better understood. Women among Woolf and Chopin, for example, Carrie Chapman Catt helped move along the passing of the 19th Amendment with assistance from the NAWSA. Once women got the ball rolling …

Living Between The Lines: Intersectionality And Self-Actualization In Shakespeare's Plays, Morgan L. Green

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

More than four hundred years after his death Shakespeare is still the most performed playwright in the English-Speaking World, and even in some cultures vastly different from Shakespeare’s England. Theatre companies continue to make him relevant by exploring new themes and tailoring the productions to the social mores of contemporary audiences. One particular theme being examined more and more by both scholars and theatre artists is diversity and the role of identity in Shakespeare’s works. Three works in which this can be easily examined are Antony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello with particular attention paid to …

The Lawrentian Woman: Monsters In The Margins Of 20th-Century British Literature, Dusty A. Brice

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite his own conservative values, D.H. Lawrence writes sexually liberated female characters. The most subversive female characters in Lawrence’s oeuvre are the Brangwens of The Rainbow. The Brangwens are prototypical models of a form of femininity that connects women to Nature while distancing them from society; his women are cast as monsters, but are strengthened from their link with Nature. They represent what I am calling the Lawrentian-Woman.

The Lawrentian-Woman has proven influential for contemporary British authors. I examine the Lawrentian-Woman’s adoption by later writers and her evolution from modernist frame to postmodern appropriation. First, I look at the …