Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

Towards A Critical Reputation: Henry James On Felix Holt, The Radical, Christine Richards

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A productive starting point for a critical evaluation of Henry James's criticism of George Eliot's fiction is his unsigned review of Felix Halt, the Radical, 1 which, as his first piece of criticism on her, is perhaps itself most usefully read against the background of the novel's extremely favourable contemporary reception,' for in his review lames addresses the issues of the novel's acclaim, arguing not only that the volume of praise it had already acquired was sufficient but also that Eliot's increasing reputation would only attract more (E&W 911). This determination to call a halt to the praise showered on …

The George Eliot Review: Journal Of The George Eliot Fellowship 2000 No. 31, Beryl Gray, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors ........................................... 5

Editors' Note ................................................ 7

ADDRESSES Colonel Christopher Hendy: Address at the wreath-laying in the George Eliot Memorial Gardens, 13 June 1999 ................................................. 9

Rt Hon. Chris Smith MP: Address at the wreath-laying in Westminster Abbey, 23 June 1999 ................................................. 11

Josie Billington: The Twenty-Eighth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 16 October 1999 ................................................ 13

Kathryn Hughes: The Toast to the Immortal Memory: George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 21 November 1999 ........................................... 27

ARTICLES Rebecca Mackay: Women and Fiction in George Eliot's 'Brother Jacob' (Prize Essay) ................................................................................... .31

Margaret Harris: The Margins of George Eliot: Editing the …

George Eliot's English Travel: "Widely Sundered Elements", Kathleen Mccormack

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Although the Midlands people, places, and stories that turn up in Scenes of Clerical Life provide the first and most easily recognized Warwickshire models in George Eliot's fiction, she also drew creatively on models she found during the many holidays and working trips she made throughout her life elsewhere within Britain. Readers' recognitions of the originals of Amos Barton and Mr. Tryan after the Scenes appeared in Blackwaod's Magazine led George Eliot to assure John Blackwood that she assembled her fiction not exclusively from her girlhood experiences but instead from 'widely sundered elements' (GEL, II, 459).' But, while Midlands models …

Silas Marner And Felix Holt: Antitheses And Affinities, Ruth Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

At first sight there seems little to link Silas Mamer with Felix Halt. There are certainly contrasts, but it is harder to find similarities between a short pastoral idyll and a complex political work that looks forward to Middlemarch rather than backward to Silas Mamer. Surely there can be few links between a fairy-tale and social analysis, between a novel rich with 'Rainbow' humour and transformed 'gold' and a much darker novel laced with irony but short on both magic and jokes. Only five years separate Silas Mamer (published in April 1861) from Felix Halt (published in June 1866) but …

Women And Fiction In George Eliot's "Brother Jacob", Rebecca Mackay

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'Brother Jacob' raises issues of perennial concern to George Eliot as an author who was also a woman. In particular, this fabular tale about a hapless confectioner and his imbecilic brother exposes the pitfalls in women's relationship(s) to cultural authority, 'the strange bright fruits of knowledge' (Woolf 160). As a fable whose hero is distinguished by fraudulence and guile, 'Brother Jacob' reflects its author 's attitude towards plagiarists and other impostors with pretensions to authorship. Even as Marian Evans disguised herself as George Eliot, the 'silly lady novelist' of her day is disguised in the story's protagonist, David Faux.

As …

Review Of George Eliot: The Last Victorian & The Journals Of George Eliot, Margaret Harris, Judith Johnston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Kathryn Hughes has written a most readable biography, breezy, relaxed, clear narrative, just right for the reader of literary biography who isn't deeply interested in literature. The story of Mary Ann and Marian Evans, Marian Evans Lewes, George Eliot and Mrs. Cross is as fascinating as the plot of the novels, and bears re-telling, but I'm doubtful about the appeal of this new book to scholars and students, whose needs for information about George Eliot's life are served by the existing biographies, and who may be misled by the sketchy criticism. It is not as if Kathryn Hughes fills the …

Obituaries: The Rt Hon. The Viscount Daventry 1921-2000; Patron Of The George Eliot Fellowship

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Francis Humphrey Maurice FitzRoy Newdegate, 3rd Viscount Daventry, died at his home, Temple House at Arbury, on 15 February. He had been ill for some time.

The Arbury Estate spans 4000 acres between Nuneaton and Bedworth and it was in one of the estate's farmhouses, South Farm, then known as Arbury Farm, that George Eliot was born in 1819 when her father was agent to the Arbury estate. It was because of this association with Arbury that Lord Daventry was invited to succeed his mother as Patron when she died in 1982. Until his illness he had taken a lot …

Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Garden Nuneaton, 13 June 1999, Christopher Hendy

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Guest of Honour was Col. Christopher Hendy, OBE, the Administrator at Arbury Hall. He gave the following Address:

We are here today to celebrate the life and works of George Eliot. 'I have heard of him, of course, but I have never read any of his books' - that is the expression that I, and many of the guides at Arbury hear when we mention the connection that George Eliot had with Arbury Hall and Park. At the time that Mary Ann Evans was writing her novels it was not politic to let it be known that the author …

Obituary Of Jerome Beaty, 1924-2000

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Jerome Beaty died on 30 January 2000, at the age of 75, after a year of illness during which he was working actively on Dickens and George Eliot. He was a fine Victorian scholar and critic, an editor, and a pioneer in the field of George Eliot textual studies. His book Middlemarch from Notebook to Novel (Urbana, 1960) analysed the genesis and composition of one of the most complex English novels, revealing that what seemed a seamless whole, more praised than studied, had its origin in two separate narrative beginnings and plans. He showed the painstaking scissors-and-paste which put together …

Manipulating Images Of Women's Power In Elizabethen England: Elizabeth I, Spenser, And Shakespeare, Amanda Kaye Martin

Theses & Dissertations

This work celebrates the influence of Elizabeth I on Elizabethan society and literature. In the opening of his Shakespearean Negotiations. Stephen Greenblatt describes writing as an outlet for the dead to speak to the living through "textual traces of themselves" that "make themselves heard in the voices of the living". These textual traces form the foundation for the critical theory of New Historicism, which perceives such traces as a conduit for literary critics to learn about an author's view of the nation, and era, in which he or she lived. In "The Elizabethan Subject and the Spenserian Text," Louis …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon: The Toast To The Immortal Memory 1999, Kathryn Hughes

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is a tremendous honour to be talking to you today. When I first started work on my biography of George Eliot back in 1993 I never imagined that I would one day be celebrating her birthday with the people to whom her life and work mean so much, the members of the George Eliot Fellowship.

Of course, when I began my research all those years ago, I knew that I would be learning about one of the greatest literary artists of the nineteenth century. But what I hadn't anticipated was just how modem and relevant George Eliot's work would …

Mary Elizabeth Braddon: Reconstructing Beauty From Portent Of Innocence To Potential Threat In Aurora Floyd And Lady Audley's Secret, Susan Bryant Cook

Theses & Honors Papers

This explores the “sensation novels”, Lady Audley’s Secret and Aurora Floyd by Mary Elizabeth Braddon during the Victorian Era. These “sensation novels” ushered in characters that were not who they seemed to be which evoked mystery in the story. Braddon also centered on the idea of not relying on a woman’s appearance but rather seeing the woman as she truly is.

Milly Barton And Emma Gwyther, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

For many years the tomb of Emma Gwyther in Chilvers Coton Churchyard in Nuneaton was totally obscured by a massive yew tree until it was recently cut back to reveal the sorry state of the tomb beneath it. Badly broken and its lettering difficult to read, it was clearly in great need of some restoration because of its place in the George Eliot story.

There seems little doubt that Emma Gwyther was the original of Milly Barton, the hard-working wife of the Rev. Amos Barton in Scenes of Clerical Life. Emma's husband was the Rev. John Gwyther, curate of Chilvers …

An Echo Of The "Holy War", Bill Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's 'Holy War' began on 2 January 1842 and lasted for four and a half months. That day her father made a significant entry in his Journal: 'Went to Trinity Church in the forenoon ... Mary Ann did not go'. In the protracted dispute with her father that followed this refusal to accompany him to church, her friends the Sibrees arranged for her to meet the Rev. Francis Watts, Professor of Theology at Spring Hill College, Birmingham, to try to help her resolve her difficulties. Their meeting probably took place in March 1842, and subsequently she wrote him six …

A Tchaikovsky/George Eliot Opera That Never Happened

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Tchaikovsky Museum at Klin in Moscow in Russia had, amongst the composer's papers, a manuscript of fragments of a scenario for an opera on the theme of 'Mr. Gilfil 's Love-Story', the second story in Scenes of Clerical Life.

Tchaikovsky modestly mentions this in his biography, stating that at first he proposed an opera based on 'The Sad Fortunes of the Reverend Amos Barton', the first story in Scenes but was drawn instead to another of the stories, 'Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story'. The composer's friend, the music critic G. A. Larosh, mentions in his memoirs that for some weeks before …

A Postcard To Rev.F.R. Evans (George Eliot's Nephew)

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'Re George Eliot' 'A' [in red ink]

(Mary Ann Evans)

Sir, I assume that you read the Ten Commandments in your church - yet in the Nuneaton Chronicle article in The Star of Aug. 7, you are said by A. E. Cross 1 to be in favour of a memorial to this 'evil-liver'. Let us hope that if people who gloat over the uncleanly erect a memorial the 'Scarlet letter' 'A" (Adulteress) will be conspicuously placed - as it is written by many of us on the title page of her works -

Let the silly project die or her …

The George Eliot Review: Journal Of The George Eliot Fellowship 1999 No. 30, Beryl Gray, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

CONTENTS

Notes on Contributors ................................................................................... 5

Editors' Note ........................................................................................... 7

REPORTS Kathleen Adams: Annual Report 1998 ........................................ 9

Yuriko Kani: Japanese Branch Report ................................................... 16

Linda K. Robertson: Report from America .................................................... 18

ADDRESSES Margaret Jennings: Address at the wreath-laying in the George Eliot Memorial Garden, 17 May 1998 ................................................ .19

Lord Hattersley: Address at the wreath-laying in Westminster Abbey, 20 June 1998 .......................................................... 21

Henry Alley: The Twenty-Seventh George Eliot Memorial Lecture, l7 October 1998 ............................................... 23

Tenniel Evans: The Toast to the Immortal Memory: George Eliot Birthday Luncheon, 22 November 1998 ......................................... 36

ARTICLES A.G. van den Broek: …

Henry James And George Eliot: Realism, Reality, And Narrative Form, Nicola Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The narratives of the Victorian writers are infused with detailed expositions of living, felt pictures; it was inevitable given the expectations of their audience. Furthermore, writers-cumcritics such as Henry lames testify to the difficulty of 'drawling] a hard and fast line on the border-land of explanation and illustration'.' lames was central to the protracted Great Debate surrounding 'The Art of Fiction' which took place in 1884, and the discussion encouraged Robert Louis Stevenson to respond with his 'A Humble Remonstrance', a gesture which can be interpreted as a tactical manoeuvre to keep the debate open. Andrew Lang's own 'The Art …

The Politics Of Religion In Felix Holt, A.G. Van Den Broek

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In chapter 3 of Felix Holt, the narrator gives an account of the 'social changes in Treby parish', including the altered character of Trebian Dissent. It had

been of a quiescent, well-to-do kind, represented architecturally by a small venerable, dark-pewed chapel, built by Presbyterians, but long occupied by a sparse congregation of Independents, who were as little moved by doctrinal zeal as their church-going neighbours, and did not feel themselves deficient in religious liberty, inasmuch as they were not hindered from occasionally slumbering in their pews, and were not obliged to go regularly to the weekly prayer meeting.

In the …

Annual Report 1998, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Every year I begin this report by saying what a busy year the Fellowship has had. Every year it seems to get busier; certainly the workload increases each year - which must be a measure of our success in reaching out in all directions, not only in the UK but abroad as well.

We begin each year in a fairly uneventful way with the Annual General Meeting, and 1998 was in the same mould, although we followed the business meeting with an excellent slide show by John Burton of the George Eliot Country in the past. John was elected to …

The Twenty-Seventh George Eliot Memorial Lecture: Ego, Anonymity, And Healing In George Eliot, Henry Alley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Eliot's ultimate goal- morally, aesthetically - was to free the individual ego from the suffering of reflecting upon itself. Her fiction, which she saw as a series of evolving psychological phases, achieves this liberation through strongly argued models of balance and through the kinds of recognition linked to anonymous heroism. Mental anguish is to be escaped through the contemplation of others, and it would follow that Eliot's cumulative effort would clarify what it means to acquire achievements on the level of quiet and anonymous bequeathal, rather than self-aggrandizing glory.

Eliot discovered that a broad perspective beyond ego may be developed …

Daniel Deronda- 1921 Style, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

While we are still awaiting news of the completion of a new film of Daniel Deronda, something that has been in the pipeline for some years, it is interesting to discover that in 1921, a cinema film of the novel was made by Butcher's Film Services Ltd of Camera House, Farringdon Avenue, London EC4. In the 5,500 feet of film Butcher's made a gallant attempt to transfer George Eliot's last great novel onto the screen but previews seemed somewhat disenchanted with the results. The Kinematograph Weekly of 19 May 1921 reported that 'Although George Eliot is not ideally suited to …

Report From America, Linda K. Roberston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The ninth annual George Eliot Dinner was held during the Modem Language Association meeting in San Francisco, California. Members of the Fellowship and friends met at Puccini and Pinetta on December 29 for excellent conversation and food. The evening included the traditional Toast to the Immortal Memory, greetings from members who could not attend, and much discussion of recent books on George Eliot and related topics. Harriet Williams located the superb Italian restaurant, which was very conveniently located, and made the arrangements.

Emma And The Countryside: Weather And A Place For A Walk, Elizabeth Toohey

Publications and Research

Raymond Williams in The Country and the City dismisses Jane Austen's depiction of the land around her as simply "weather or a place for a walk." In Emma's ideology, however, there is a tension between an ostensibly apolitical stance, which is de facto conservative in working to maintain the status quo, and the extent to which a more progressive agenda can be seen through the social mobility of certain principle characters, albeit by "conservative means." For all the leisure, picnics, and parties that constitute the greater part of Emma, labor is evident and valued. The country may be largely …

Androgyny Or Catastrophe: Doris Lessing's Vision In The Early 1970s, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

Doris Lessing's novels of the early 1970s offer readers a rare kind of wisdom one which has been nourished by Sufism, a form of Islamic mysticism, which she admires. Unlike Lessing's earlier fiction which was simply influenced by the ideas of Sufism, three of her novels-Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), The Summer Before the Dark (1973), and The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)-are literally Sufi fables-that is, symbolic stories, each of which "illuminates truth" (qtd. in Shah, The Sufis 14). The Sufi truth illuminated by these novels is that "life is One," and that because we have …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon: The Toast To The Immortal Memory 1998, Tenniel Evans

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Sixty-two years ago, almost to the day - a freezing 25 November 1936 - I arrived at the London docks from Africa and came, without realizing it at the time, to live in the country of my background. I was to live with Alison and Rupert Winser and their family in the Rectory at Allesley, just outside Coventry, and it became my home for the next five years. By the end of that time, of course, the war had blown away the old life and it would never be the same again. So I was lucky that at least I …

Wreath-Laying In Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey 1998, Roy Hattersley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I take a strange pleasure in being associated, no matter how vicariously, with the greatest novelist in the English language. I am by no means sure that she would approve of this event. Asked about God, Immortality and Duty - strange topics of conversation to be raised during an afternoon's stroll - 'she pronounced with terrible earnestness how inconceivable was the first, how unbelievable the second and how peremptory and absolute the third'. But there she is in black, polished marble on the floor of Westminster Abbey - the junkyard of the nation's vanities.

She keeps appropriate company, in a …

Wreath-Laying In The George Eliot Memorial Garden Nuneaton, May 1998, Margaret Jennings

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In paying tribute to George Eliot today we acknowledge a debt of gratitude owed to her for the legacy of wonderful novels which have enriched so many lives during both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

As we approach the twenty-first century I find myself considering how her work will be greeted by the coming generations, indeed not just in a new century but in a new millenium.

In the early part of this century, the Bloomsbury writer Virginia Woolf helped restore George Eliot's standing as a great novelist by claiming that Middlemarch was one of the few novels for grown-up …

Obituary- Ezell

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

We are sad to report the death on February 23rd. of Dr. Ezell at his home in Vermont. He had been one of our most supportive and active members. In the early 1970's a literary lady wrote a somewhat patronising letter to the Times Literary Supplement about the Fellowship's efforts to raise funds for a memorial stone to George Eliot in Westminster Abbey. It was read in the United States by Dr. Ezell. He felt so strongly about the dismissive tone of the letter that he immediately became a life member of the Fellowship, enrolled some of his patients, appealed …

The Idea Of An English Gentleman: Mr. Knightley And Arthur Donnithorne, David Ball

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

My modest purpose in this essay is to develop the interesting suggestion of Ellen Moers in Literary Women that George Eliot's inspiration to write Adam Bede may well have lain in her attentive reading of Emma: that Adam Bede himself is the heroic and detailed portrait of Robert Martin that Emma has no place for. George Eliot's father, Robert Evans, was a mari similar to Robert Martin and Adam Bede, in both status and ability, and the creation of Adam is Eliot's first fictional tribute to him. Ellen Moers also briefly compares Harriet Smith and Hetty Sorrel as sharing 'the …