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The Thirty-Fifth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2006- Glimpses Of Life At 142 Strand, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

1. John Chapman and the Strand in 1847

24 July 1847 the following advertisement appeared in the weekly periodical, the Athenaeum:

MR CHAPMAN, Bookseller and Publisher, begs to announce that he has REMOVED his Business from 121 Newgate Street, to more spacious premises on the South side of the STRAND, No 142, a few doors West of Somerset House; and requests, therefore, that all communications may be forwarded to the latter address.

For the next seven years John Chapman's 'spacious premises' - consisting of the bookselling business and publishing house, his family home, and rooms for literary lodgers - was …

Review : Female Identity In Contemporary Zimbabwean Fiction By Katrin Berndt., Ann Elizabeth Willey

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Noms Et Identités Dans La Migration Des Coeurs : Vers Une Affirmation De L’Identité Caribéenne, Hanétha Vété-Congolo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In Maryse Condé’s Windward Heights, the female characters bear the same first and last names, and act in the same way as, their counterparts in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. It would seem relevant, therefore, to ask about the dialectics of naming and identity set out in Windward Heights, and what this might mean for Caribbean identity. Is naming the only thing that gives Condé’s characters their identity? Or are they mirror-image projections of Brontë’s characters. Answering these questions, we may be able to determine how Condé’s work, as a new creation, establishes its own identity and whether its meaning is …

Chariman's Address At The Annual General Meeting Of The Fellowship, 11 March 2006, Bill Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

My Address at the AGM is usually concerned with our plans and hopes for the future but perhaps on this rather special day I may be allowed a glance at the past.

Last week I chaired a Council meeting for the last time; my first one was on 6 March 1971 - 35 years ago. When I succeeded Stan Dickens as Chairman in 1971 it was just two years after the remarkable success of the Fellowship's efforts to Commemorate the 150th anniversary of George Eliot's birth in 1969. That event became the foundation for our optimistic growth in the 1970s …

Laughing With George Eliot, R.J. Jenkins

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The tradition of admiring George Eliot for her genius is as old as the author herself. Alexander Main, one of her more sycophantic devotees, laid the foundations of this tradition during her lifetime with the publication of Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings, a work dedicated 'to George Eliot in recognition of a genius as original as it is profound and a morality as pure as it is impassioned'. Though Main confesses that the preface to his book is 'not the place in which to attempt to give an exposition of George Eliot's genius', he cannot resist using it to remind …

Costanza, Constance, Custance And Emare: Romola's Medieval Ancestry, Katherine Inglis

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Arguably the most problematic episode of Romola for the novel's reviewers and critics is Romola's imitation of Boccaccio's heroine Costanza (or Gostanza) in the two chapters 'Drifting Away' and 'Romola's Waking'; even Romola's most favourable early reviews censured the episode's structural and stylistic interruption. However, as Mark Turner and Caroline Levine have observed, the critical consensus has evolved from censure of 'an unseemly breach in the narrative' to reappraisal of a 'crucial site of interest'.' If an unwritten orthodoxy remains then it is a less value-laden sense that the chapters depart from the novel's overarching historical project. However, it is …

Imagination, Morality, And The Spectre Of Sade In George Eliot's Romola And Daniel Deronda, Margaux Fragoso

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In her final book, Impressions of Theophrastus Such, George Eliot vocalizes her contempt for writers who dismiss morality 'as a sort of twaddle for bibs and tuckers, a doctrine of dulness, a mere incident in human stupidity' (Impressions 134). It is well known that Eliot subscribed to a complex system of morals that each successive novel brings closer to fruition. Eliot's last novel Daniel Deronda is her closest inspection of the conflict between egoism and morality. It explores the psyche of a woman who is made to develop moral sensibilities: Gwendolen's 'bad' luck in marrying Grandcourt creates conditions that foster …

Review Of George Eliot And Victorian Attitudes To Racial Diversity, Colonialism, Darwinism, Class, Gender, And Jewish Culture And Prophecy, Brenda Mckay

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Brenda McKay's volume, George Eliot and Victorian Attitudes to Racial Diversity, Colonialism, Darwinism, Class, Gender, and Jewish Culture and Prophecy will most likely appear on most of our students' and colleagues' bibliographies for some time to come. The topics addressed in this book will clearly appeal to our current generation of scholars and budding scholars; McKay describes her book in the Prologue as being 'chiefly devoted' to the study of 'the race discourse' in Eliot's work. In addition, as the unwieldy title suggests, McKay tries to connect to this emphasis on race issues of 'Colonialism, Darwinism, Class, Gender, and Jewish …

Note On Contributors 2006

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Bill Adams has been Chairman of the Fellowship from 1971 until his retirement this year.

Kathleen Adams has been Secretary of the Fellowship since 1968. She initiated the Review in 1970, was editor until 1981 and co-editor 1982-91. She published Those of Us Who Loved Her in 1980 and A Community of Interest: The Story of the George Eliot Fellowship 1930-2000 in 2000.

Michael Baron is a Senior Lecturer in the School of English and Humanities at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of a monograph on Wordsworth and articles on nineteenth and twentieth century poetry. He …

Review Of Adam Bede, Mary Waldron

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This Broadview edition of Adam Bede has a biographical and critical introduction, appropriately integrating G. H. Lewes into its discourse, and useful essays on some of the themes of the novel, - Religion, Love, Rank and Status. There are short summaries of selected critical commentaries from the contemporary to the current, including an appraisal of the feminist divide over George Eliot. The brief chronology is succeeded by a note on the text, here that of the First Edition with minor corrections/adjustments from the manuscript, footnoted throughout. The Appendices which follow it provide foreground and background to the novel, for example …

Address At Wreath-Laying In Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, 30 June 2005, Sally Brown

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Not all great writers are great readers, but George Eliot certainly was. A voracious reader of other writers - Dante, Goethe, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Scott - she was also very fond of reading aloud. Her husband, John Walter Cross, praised her 'naturally rich, deep voice, rendered completely flexible by constant practice; with the keenest perception of the requirements of emphasis; and with the most subtle modulations of tone'. 'The Bible and our elder English poets,' he thought, best suited its 'organ-like' quality.

Reading aloud - now, sadly, an almost vanished pastime - was, of course, a customary one in Victorian …

Review Of George Eliot's Travels: Composite Characters And Coded Communications., Kathleen Mccormack

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When we think of George Eliot, the word 'travels' is likely to suggest journeys to far-flung places in foreign lands, but considered in an English setting, she seems to be locked in either Warwickshire or London. Kathleen McCormack, however, shows how widely George Eliot travelled in her own country, so widely that she made over fifty visits to English places and only thirty to foreign destinations. Indeed, 'widely' is a word that stimulates Kathleen McCormack's imagination as she has revealed in an earlier work, George Eliot and Intoxication (2000), in which the last word, 'Intoxication', is interpreted in its widest …

The Immortal Memory Of George Eliot; Toast Proposed At The George Eliot Birthday Lunch, 20 November 2005

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I always used to be an admirer of Charles Lamb until I read recently his view of bluestockings or intellectual women writers: 'If she belonged to me I would lock her up and feed her on bread and water, till she left off writing poetry. A female poet, or female writer of any kind, ranks below an actress I think.' What a sentiment from a man who was a contemporary of Jane Austen and whose only other defence could have been that he didn't live long enough to read George Eliot!

I would like to begin by expressing my appreciation …

Review Of Literature And Medicine In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Janis Mclarren Caldwell

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The title of this study somewhat belies its range and ambition. Caldwell offers a compelling account of the connections between medicine, hermeneutics and theology in the early and midcentury, and uses these related disciplines as the bases of intriguing new readings of literary texts - unsurprisingly including Middlemarch. Caldwell brings to her work the (in literary studies) unusual perspective of a former practising doctor; this allows her to blend a sophisticated discussion of historical debates around knowledge and belief about the material and the divine in the nineteenth century with an immediate sense of the physical reality of medical treatments …

Review Of The Reenchantment Of Nineteenth-Century Fiction: Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, And Serialization, David Payne

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

'To begin reading George Eliot,' David Payne suggests, 'is speedily to encounter the conviction that modernity is best approached from an oblique angle.' Unlike, say, her contemporary, Charles Dickens, George Eliot's fictions 'return us to the provincial settings of Austen and Scott; and they set their actions in historical pasts which, as we read along, soon appear quite specific.' Payne's study of Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot is primarily concerned with the Victorian response to modernity, but in a fairly specific methodological way, that entwines 'the ideological history of theology and political economy, the literary history of the novel, and …

Review Of Realist Vision, Peter Brooks

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In 1884, Emile Zola wrote the preface to the catalogue for a retrospective exhibition of Edouard Manet's paintings. 'Forget ideas of perfection and of the absolute', the author implored: 'don't believe that something is beautiful because it is perfect, according to certain physical and metaphysical conventions. A thing is beautiful because it is living, because it is human'. While few today would dispute the intrinsic beauty of Manet's works, Zola's defense was necessary in its day; Manet's oeuvre constantly defied physical and metaphysical conventions of the Salons, critics, and public and was commonly charged with depicting ugliness in an unaccomplished …

The Thirty-Fourth George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2005- George Eliot And Weimar: 'An Affinity For What The World Calls "Dull Places", John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

One hundred and fifty years ago this year, in June and July 1855, the future George Eliot published two articles in Fraser 's Magazine about her experiences in Weimar with G. H. Lewes between August and November 1854: 'Three Months in Weimar' and 'Liszt, Wagner, and Weimar'. When she had, seemingly out of the blue, left London with Lewes in July 1854 to start their life together, taking a steamer from St Katherine's dock to Antwerp, it was to Weimar that they were heading to collect material for the Life of Goethe that Lewes was writing. Known to most people …

Japanese Branch Report 2005, Yuko Nakamura

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Saturday 26 November 2005, the ninth Annual Convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Tokyo Kasei University.

The morning session began with an opening remark by Kazuo Fujikawa (Okayama University), followed by a welcome address by Keiji Yata (Tokyo Kasei University). In the morning, we had three papers presented. The first two papers were introduced and commented upon by Miwa Ohta (Chuo University), and the third by Yoko Nagai (Keio University).

The first paper, "'Janet's Repentance" - The story of an unhappy, married couple -' was presented by Naomi Ohno (Toyo University). She focused on …

A Most Remarkable Cat, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Because George Eliot is buried in London's Highgate Cemetery the Fellowship is a member of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery who care for this vast burial area. We receive a regular newsletter from the Friends which recently reported that Domino, the cemetery cat, liked to accompany visitors. On one occasion some time ago Domino accompanied a party to the huge Karl Marx memorial in the Western Cemetery. One of the party expressed a wish to see the grave of George Eliot if it was not too far away. Domino turned and led them straight to the grave which is very …

Review Of The Complete Shorter Poetry Of George Eliot, Antonie Gerard Van Den Broek

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is the first fully edited and annotated edition of George Eliot's poems to appear in print. 'Shorter' means all the poems except The Spanish Gypsy, which is to appear in a companion volume by the same editors in 2008. Whatever arguments there may be about the 'continuing revaluation of George Eliot's oeuvre' in William Baker's phrase, readers need precise evidence about their genesis, publication and textual revisions and (in some cases) meanings, and Antonie van den Broek's edition provides a wealth of such information. It includes 'all variants in MSS and printed versions'; 'original spelling and punctuation have been …

Annual Report 2005, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Our year began uneventfully with the AGM held for the first time at the Heritage Centre with the added advantage of easy and free parking and the opportunity to provide refreshments. There were no changes to the Fellowship Council or to the officers. The Lord Mayor of Coventry, Councillor John Gazey, had suggested that there should be a literary lunch in Coventry to celebrate George Eliot and this took place on 16 April. We had worked with the Mayor's secretary in making all the arrangements but the first disappointment was that, on arrival at the splendid St Mary's Guildhall, the …

Aesop's Fables And George Eliot's Brother And Sisters Sonnets, Margaret Wolfit

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

It is always exciting to discover something new and to come upon it unexpectedly. That was my happy experience a few years ago. I had decided to try my hand at devising a biographical programme on George Eliot and to attempt to portray her at the end of her life, reminiscing on past events. I wanted to absorb as much as I could about her, starting with her early days. What were the influences that shaped her life and writing? What books had she read as a child?

She tells us: 'I could not be satisfied with the things around …

Review Of George Eliot's Dialogue With John Milton, Anna K. Nardo

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This, despite some blemishes and limitations indicated in passing below, is an examination of selected writings by Milton, the stories about him, and the engagement with his life and works which is reflected in the life and works of George Eliot. Nardo's primary aim is to show how Eliot's 'strenuous dialogue with Milton's life and art ... animated the epic novels she wrote for an age of unbelief' (1). Immediately we are struck by the large claims implied by 'animated' and 'epic' and the convenient but dubious definition of 'an age of unbelief'. The statement does scant service to the …

Romantic Love As A Spiritual Companionship? A Buddhist Re-Reading Of George Eliot, Richard Winter

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Introduction

Like most of George Eliot's fiction, Daniel Deronda can be read as a story about the possibility of redemption. Gwendolen Harleth' s vanity and ambition make her vulnerable to Grandcourt' s desire for dominance, and their marriage is a disaster. Belatedly, Gwendolen comes to recognise that a marriage to Daniel Deronda instead of Grandcourt might have rescued her from her egotism and led to her moral and emotional salvation. But for Deronda finding a wife is part of exploring a wider social and spiritual significance for his existence - i.e. his Jewish cultural origin and the Zionist religious, historical, …

Review Of Our Daughters Must Be Wives: Marriageable Young Women In The Novels Of Dickens, Eliot And Hardy, Britta Zangen

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Adopting the' 1st Gent's' maxim from the epigraph to chapter ten of Eliot's Daniel Deronda: 'Our daughters must be wives and to be wives must be what men will choose:/ Men's taste is women's test [ ....] ‘, Britta Zangen sets out to test the accuracy of this epigram throughout the Victorian period. The book is ambitious in scope, placing analysis of the marriageable woman in the complete works of Dickens, Eliot, and Hardy, within a thorough socio-historical framework which details shifting attitudes to the Woman Question from the 1840s to the 1890s. These weighty sections of historical 'context' are …

Adam Bede, Geoffrey Beevers

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Adam Bede is not easily adaptable to the stage. Its structure is essentially narrative rather than dramatic, and much of its interest consists in the probing of moral issues and analysis of motive. A straightforward retelling of the plot without any sort of commentary (as often happens with television adaptations) would leave it an empty shell. Geoffrey Beevers is well aware of this and is concerned to preserve as much of George Eliot's own voice as he can. One way of doing this would have been to include a 'voice over' explaining, commenting and interpreting (as was done for example …

Japanese Branch Report 2004, Keiji Yata

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On Saturday, 27 November 2004, the eighth annual convention of the George Eliot Fellowship of Japan was held at Literature Hall in Kobe College (Kobe Jogakuin).

The morning session began with an opening address by Kazuo Fujikawa (Okayama University), followed by a welcome address by Masako Hirai (Kobe College). In the morning, we had three papers. The first two papers were introduced and commented upon by Toshie Maeda (Kansai University), while Hiroshi Oshima (Hyogo University of Teacher Education) introduced and commented upon the third.

Nana Yano (Shirayuri College) read the first paper, 'Hetty and Water Imagery in Adam Bede'. Her …

The Widening Vision And Undying Hope In The Spanish Gypsy, Miyuki Amano

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On 20 May 1839, young Mary Ann Evans wrote to her close friend, Maria Lewis, about her 'oscillating judgment' on a religious matter: 'On no subject do I veer to all points of the compass more frequently than on the nature of the visible church. I am powerfully attracted in a certain direction but when I am about to settle there, counter assertions shake me from my position'.1 This confession foreshadows a characteristic pattern of thinking of the later George Eliot. Her keen insight enables her to grasp the validity of multiple perspectives, and at the same time prevents her …

The Thirty-Third George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 2004 'School-Time': George Eliot And Education, Dinah Birch

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In George Eliot's first piece of published fiction, the hero - if that's the right word for the hapless Reverend Amos Barton - is no advertisement for the conventional schooling of a middle-class Englishman. Though he has managed to struggle through the university degree he needs to qualify him for a clerical life, his years as a student have not made an intellectual of Amos: 'Mr. Barton had not the gift of perfect accuracy in English orthography and syntax, which was unfortunate, as he was known not to be a Hebrew scholar, and not in the least suspected of being …

Annual Report 2004, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Our year never gets off to an exciting start because the first event is the Annual General Meeting but the 2004 one was rather different. The business meeting was completed swiftly as there was no change to the Council or to the officers. There was still some concern about the positions of Chairman and Secretary as there were no nominations for either post although it was known that both were eager to be replaced. The meeting was very well attended but this was obviously because we followed the business meeting with a visit from Louis Marks who produced the BBC …