Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

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

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

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; …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …

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 …

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 …

John Letts, The Gifted Warwickshire Re Sculptor., John Letts

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Some four years have elapsed since my first brief encounter with Mary Ann Evans - or 'Ann' as I had called her at that time. I t had been a strange, emotional experience with moments of deep passion and quiet companionship. But, it was not to last. The affair ended as it began, with a suddenness that was, in itself, an awakening. One does not easily get over such an experience except, perhaps, by the passing of time. And time had passed.

It was a surprise, therefore. when I discovered that a few of her close 'friends', knowing of our …

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 …

Middlemarch : Three Italian Journeys, Henry M. Alley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In Middlemarch, Dorothea’s intense moment of disillusionment in Rome has been generally traced to Eliot’s own Italian journey of 1860, when, as Gordon S. Haight notes (324),¹ the disappointment in many sights of the Eternal City paralleled her heroine’s. The comparisons are very compelling, especially those involving the joined responses of author and heroine to the interior landscape of St. Paul’s (“the lovely marble… was half-covered with hideous red drapery (Life 132: vol. 2, ch. 10);² "the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere (was) like a disease of the retina" (226; ch. 20)). …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 Evolution Of Doris Lessing's Art From A Mystical Moment To Space Fiction, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

After publishing ten major novels, Doris Lessing has begun writing what she calls '·space fiction'· for her new series entitled Canopus in Argos: Archives. In a review of the first two novels published in this series, namely, Shikasta ( 1979) and the Marriages Between Zones Three. Four, and Five (1980)¹. Jean Pickering stresses that many of Doris Lessing's most avid readers were initially attracted to her because of her insights about the female experience and because of her allegiance to nineteenth-century realism." Pickering suggests that Lessing's growing interest in space fiction and Sufism (Islamic mysticism) has …

The Immortal Memory Of George Eliot, Jonathan Ouvry

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Having been aware, for some time, that I was about to undergo what I thought would be an ordeal, but which I realise may even turn out to be an enjoyable experience, I have been looking out for ways and means of getting through my allotted time without too much difficulty. I was delighted, therefore, to observe a distinguished visitor to the Huguenot Society at a recent meeting. Evidently an experienced academic, he knew just what to do. I n the first place his lecture was written out on a great many small sheets of paper. At the end of …

Westminster Abbey Wreath-Laying, Steve Race

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It was George Eliot's Parson Gilfil who "smoked very long pipes, and preached very short sermons". Anyone speaking on this occasion (whether clergyman or layman) should remember Parson Gilfil, and preach a very short sermon!

But standing here, and looking around this little group of memorials. George Eliot, Lewis Carroll, Tennyson, Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, John Masefield ... one can't help thinking how happily they must have greeted one another's arrival in this poetic Pantheon. ("Have you heard, Tom? George Eliot's joining us! "). One also reflects on how long all these now-silent literary lions …

The George Eliot Fellowship- 19, D.E. Beamish, A. Reader, Graham Handley, Edith Lenton, Margaret Wolfit, Gabreil Woolf

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When I wrote the last newsletter we had not then had Gabriel Woolf’s prgramme of readings entitled “The Warwichshire Pen”. It was, as always, immensely successful- in its ccontent, its performance (see the Review, p. 50) and also financially. That we make a profit at all is entirely due to the great generosity of those members who sponsor the two performance each year. Without these good friends we would certainly not be able to play at the University of Warwick Arts Centre and we are so grateful for their help and support. “The Warwichshire Pen” is to be repeated in …

The Treatment Of Women In The History Of Rasselas, Prince Of Abyssinia, Cindy Fritz

Masters Theses

Dr. Samuel Johnson, one of the most prolific and profound contributers to the English language, is, unfortunately, better known for his life and his anti-feminist point of view. James Boswell, in his book The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., provides many pieces of Johnson's conversations which attempt to illustrate the doctor's belief that women were unable to understand the complexities of anything beyond their domestic duties, a belief widely supported among the classes throughout the seventeenth century until the middle eighteenth century. However, this paper, using historical and biographical evidence, demonstrates that Johnson's attitude towards women, specifically in his …

Nuneaton Wreath-Laying, F.H.M. Fitzory Newdegate

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I am delighted to be here this afternoon to lay the annual wreath at this ceremony, which was for so long and so happily associated with my mother. As a child I was not over-encouraged to reason the works of George Eliot, but I did, so to speak, grow up with her as part of the story of Arbury and the surrounding countryside, which she loved so much and which so greatly influenced her earlier works. It is not always easy to see someone who is part of one’s own background as a world figure, a universal spirit whose works …

Jane Austens' Attitude Toward The Position Of Women, Carol Burford

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Jane Austen's attitude toward the position of middle-class women at the end of the eighteenth century is examined in the context of her life and thought and the women characters in her six novels. Comparisons are made with the position of women today regarding marriage, work, and the goals of the women's liberation movement. Jane Austen shared with feminists a recognition of the need for self-fulfillment. Because she was a realist, she provided fulfillment for her heroines through the only vehicle that was available to most women of her time--marriage. The solution she worked out for satisfying this need in …

Chaucer's Criseyde: Portrait Of Woman, Nancy Joan Faulkner

Theses & Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

Mrs. Gaskell's Social Attitudes In Relation To Her Times, Carrie Lakin

English Language and Literature ETDs

It is the purpose of this study (1) to show the many influences which led Elizabeth Gaskell to write novels concerned with social problems of her day; (2) to show the relation of her social attitudes as revealed in three novels to her times and to the influences working on her; and (3) to show how she hoped to bring about reforms through her social problem novels.

A Comparison Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Century Criticism Of Shakespeare's Heroines, Grace Mcleod Gartman

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The nineteenth century critics appraised Shakespeare's heroines by standards different from those of the twentieth; consequently the two ages reached different conclusions. The purpose of this paper is to point out just what these differences are.

A paper of this scope had to be narrowed in some ways. Otherwise a formidable array of heroines would have been enumerated, but little depth of research could have been shown. In the general conclusion the result would have been the same, as I have discovered through wide reading. To limit the subject only the most famous heroines could be included. The process of …

Sixty Literary Years: The Foundation Of The George Eliot Fellowship, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When the George Eliot Fellowship was born sixty years ago, the infant had emerged after a labour of some 25 years. A.F. Cross, its founder, had been editor of Nuneaton newspapers since 1895. For much of that time he had been campaigning for a memorial to George Eliot in her native town, but had met with apathy at every turn. For two weeks during the summer of 1930, Mr. Cross handed over the Editorial chair of the Nuneaton Chronicle to a Cambridge undergraduate, to give the young man an opportunity to gain an inside knowledge of newspaper production. His young …

Ua98/1 Green & Gold, Vol. Iii, No. 1, Potter College For Young Ladies

WKU Administration Documents

Magazine created by and about the students of Potter College. The Green & Gold contains articles, short stories, poetry and news regarding events of the college, students and alumni.

• Editorial
• Obenchain, Margery. Milton’s Angels
• Potter, Reed. The Song of Roland
• Elmore, Cynthinia. Robin Hood
• Brownell, Estelle. Sir Roger de Coverley
• Deane, Everett. A Dream in the Tenses
• A Study of Three Plays of Shakespeare – Richard III, Richard II & King John
• To Psychology
• Senior Notes – Class of 1905 (PC)
• Junior Notes – Class of 1906 (PC)
• Sophomore Notes – Class of 1907 (PC)
• Freshman Notes – Class of …