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The George Eliot Review: Journal Of The George Eliot Fellowship- 1996 No.27, Beryl Gray, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

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

REPORTS Kathleen Adams: Annual Report 1995 .................................... 7

Ruth Barris: University of Warwick, Second George Eliot Conference Report: 'George Eliot and Europe' ............................................................... 12

Rosalind De Sailly: University of Adelaide, Australian Victorian Studies Association Seventeenth Conference Report: 'The Victorians and Science'..................... 16

Elizabeth Gundrey: Report on the lecture delivered by John Cooper at the National Portrait Gallery, December 1995: 'George Eliot at the National Portrait Gallery'................... 18

Linda K. Robertson: American Branch Report 1995 ..............................19

ADDRESSES Richard Thompson: Wreath-laying in the George Eliot Memorial Garden, 11 June 1995 .....................................................................20

John Rignall: The Twenty-Fourth George Eliot …

Music As A Sign In Daniel Deronda, Phyllis Weliver

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The language of music communicates and contributes to spiritual transformation in Daniel Deronda. It expresses non-verbal truths about humanity's connection to the world, and unifies the novel with a continuous vocabulary since sound and silence are frequently described in musical terms. George Eliot specifies meaning in non-verbal mediums. For instance, since the narrator says that Gwendolen blushes as a result of surprise, the reader can decipher an encoded meaning in situations where she blushes, although the characters must still interpret via deduction: 'A blush is no language: only a dubious flag-signal which may mean either of two contradictories. In order …

A Lifted Veil, Suzanne Tatin

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Last summer, while compiling a checklist of art objects owned by the Clark Library, Renee Chin, a UCLA undergraduate and a Getty intern, discovered a portrait of George Eliot in the art storage room. Senior Library staff had not seen this portrait before and an internal inventory conducted in 1936 appears to have been the last documentation of its existence.

The painting was executed early in 1850 during Eliot's stay abroad. The previous summer, Eliot had travelled to the Continent with her friends Charles and Cara Bray. When the Brays returned to England, Eliot remained in Geneva and in October …

The Two Georges And The Gunner, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Edward Bruce Hamley (1824-93) was a dedicated professional soldier, a military historian and theorist and a man of varied literary interests. He was a member of a distinguished Cornish family, and was educated at Bodmin Grammar School and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, being commissioned in the Royal Artillery in 1843, thereafter serving in Ireland and Canada (1844-8), and devoting himself to field sports, reading, and indulging his love of cats. His earliest papers appeared in Fraser's (1849-50), and in 1853 his superbly ironic novel Lady Lee's Widowhood made him a pas singly famous writer. But the Crimean War clipped …

Review Of The Letters Of George Henry Lewes, Terence R. Wright

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This edition of Lewes's letters, collected from a range of libraries across the world and presented with clear introductions and notes, is a welcome resource to all readers of Lewes and Eliot. It is not a complete collection, deliberately setting out to supplement the Lewes items included in Gordon Haight's George Eliot Letters so that the two of them now provide a complete record of all Lewes's letters, or at least all the letters that Baker's widely cast net has been able to trace. Some of these (fifty-seven to be precise) are summarized rather than transcribed but the others (442 …

Buried Treasure, A.F. Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Most commentors agree that George Eliot furnished her early stories from memories of actual places, events and people encountered in her childhood and youth in Warwickshire. In making this (perhaps involuntary) choice so soon after her liaison with G. H. Lewes began she was probably already aware that the estrangement from her family, and consequent exile away from her roots in the Midlands, was inevitable. So, perhaps with a strong nostalgic sense of isolation, she began writing about Nuneaton, thinly disguised as 'Milby' which those familiar with the place were quickly able to recognize. Later on, the source of her …

Review Of The Language Of Gender And Class: Transformation In The Victorian Novel, Patricia Ingham

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Patricia Ingham begins her study of six Victorian novels - Charlotte Bronte's Shirley (1849), Mrs. Gaskell's North and South (1855), Dickens's Hard Times (1854), George Eliot's Felix Holt (1866), George Gissing's The Unclassed (version of 1884), and Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (1895) - by reflecting on the critical commonplace that nineteenth- century representations of gender are concomitantly linked to representations of social class. Broadly speaking, the argument is this: control of the potentially dangerous lower classes by the increasingly empowered middle classes required some sort of justification; the image of the caring, sensitive middle-class woman/soon-to-be-wife eclipsed, or at least …

The Imaginary Vision In Adam Bede: Hetty's Mirrors And The Object A, Katrina Ruth

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In October 1857, George Eliot began her first full-length major novel, Adam Bede. Having just completed her last 'scene' - 'Janet's Repentance' - from Scenes of Clerical Life, she decided to use a 'large canvas' for her next endeavour, an endeavour which would be only the beginning of a series of successful novels. In a letter to her publisher, who was expecting another 'scene' that would continue the success of the series of pastoral stories about the lives of clergymen, Eliot wrote to John Blackwood, claiming that: 'my new story haunts me a great deal. ... It will be a …

Annual Report 1996, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

When our year began with the Annual General Meeting we had the opportunity to accept our new Constitution. This enabled us to apply for and receive Charitable Status which we hope will be a useful situation for us in the future. At the meeting we were afraid that we were to lose a wonderful treasurer with no sign of a replacement but John Bunn agreed to stay on until the end of September while our search continued. Before that deadline Sally-Ann Pye offered her services and she has worked well and efficiently with us since, proving a helpful and enthusiastic …

Review Of Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, Brother Jacob, Ruth Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Silas Mamer, The Lifted Veil and Brother Jacob have formed a triple alliance ever since they were first published together at George Eliot's request in the Cabinet Edition of 1878. That the fellowship is far from uneasy is proved by Peter Mudford in his intelligent introduction to the Everyman Paperback edition where he shows that the three narratives are united by the common theme of alienation and exile. Mudford then examines each story in turn, discussing Brother Jacob after Silas Mamer because of features common to both, and then turning to The Lifted Veil which he calls 'the odd-ball of …

University Of Warwick, Second George Eliot Conference Report, Ruth Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In July 1995, the English Department of the University of Warwick, in conjunction with the George Eliot Fellowship, hosted a week-end conference on George Eliot and Europe. This seemed a natural progression from the 1992 conference on George Eliot at the Heart of England, since although George Eliot's roots in Warwickshire were deep, her intellect and imagination were continually branching out towards wider horizons. As though to echo this enlargement of perspective, there were more lectures this time (twenty to 1992's ten) and many more speakers from abroad.

On Friday evening, the opening lecture was given by Professor Margaret Harris …

Review Of Fact And Feeling: Baconian Science And The Nineteenth-Century Literary, Rosalind De Sailly

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

One of the latest developments in the history of ideas is the history and philosophy of science, and its increasing relevance to readers of Victorian literature is evinced by this work There is now a school of thought within George Eliot scholarship devoted to the scientific elements in her work, established by U. C. Knoepflmacher and consolidated by Gillian Beer and Sally Shuttleworth. The use of the philosophy of science as a tool to examine literary texts entails the meeting of two not antithetical disciplines, and offers a new viewpoint on Eliot that is peculiarly appropriate to a writer who …

Review Of Literature In The Markerplace: Nineteenth-Century British Publishing And Reading Practices, Mark Turner

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Literature in the Marketplace is a significant contribution to nineteenth-century studies and an important addition to recent work in the field of cultural production. The essays in this collection draw on a range of theoretical positions (materialist, historicist, feminist, poststructuralist) in discussing the publishing history, readership, modes of production, market trends and authorship of several literary artifacts including triple-deckers, periodicals, valentines, illustrations and advertisements. There is something of interest here for all students and scholars of Victorian literature and culture.

As the editors note in their introduction, the broadly defined field of publishing history is not unified; there is no …

Review Of Sex Scandal, The Private Parts Of Victorian Fiction, William A. Cohen

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I feel I should begin with a warning: 'this review contains material which some readers may find offensive'. I apologize, but it is not my fault.

The book centres on the relation between sex scandals and literature. Cohen believes that Victorian England was a 'culture of scandal' - a culture in which we still live - in which people were preoccupied with sexual behaviour but at the same time unable to admit it. Sex was simultaneously fascinating and unspeakable. The result was the evolution of a sort of doublethink or linguistic code, through which sexual matters could be at once …

Phantom Formations: Aesthetic Ideology And The Bildungsroman, Marc Redfield

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Marc Redfield has written an ambitious, challenging and closely argued book with a scope extending even beyond what its title may suggest. While focusing in the German tradition of the Bildungsroman, or novel of education, it engages the whole significance of aesthetics in Western culture since the Enlightenment and, through this in turn, the nature of the modem literary academy and the recent function of literary theory within it. The argument draws deftly on a formidable knowledge of relevant debates and contexts.

The term Bildungsroman has suffered a peculiar bifurcation. Outside specialist Germanist circles it has become to mean, as …

Review Of Imperialism At Home: Race And Victorian Women's Fiction, Susan Meyer

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

My favourite exam 'howler' came from a first year student who wrote lyrically of the episode in Wuthering Heights in which Cathy opened the window, 'and the Moors came pounding in' - as though a hundred dark-skinned men on horseback came trampling over Cathy's prostrate body. Susan Meyer's book, Imperialism at Home, while in no way suggesting anything so ludicrous as a north African invasion of a lonely house on the Yorkshire moors, does, nevertheless, lend a certain logic to the idea. Meyer's point is that we should read the abundant oriental imagery and allusions in Victorian fiction by women …

American Branch Report 1996, Linda K. Roberston

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The seventh annual dinner of the American branch was held at the I Matti restaurant in Washington, D.C. on 29 December 1996. There was no formal programme, but the traditional toast was offered and greetings were delivered from members who could not attend. Those present particularly appreciated the messages from Kathleen and Bill Adams and from Harriet Williams. While we enjoyed excellent Italian food, there was lively conversation about recent works on George Eliot, film versions of various nineteenth-century novels, and our own projects and recent reading. Those in attendance were Marjorie Goss, Shoshana Knapp, Lee Pierson, Meri-Jane Rochelson, Ed …

The Twenty-Fourth George Eliot Memorial Lecture: George Eliot And The Furniture Of The House Of Fiction, John Rignall

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In a letter to Martha Jackson of March 1841 the young Marian Evans, at the age of twenty- one, reflects on the way that a person's immediate surroundings help determine the impression that he or she makes on others:

I suppose we are all loved (or despised) a little for the sake of our circumstances as well as for our qualities .... What extrinsic charm have /, to make people care for me a little more then my qualities might deserve? Certainly none from the landscape about me, and as little from the carpets and curtains and other recommendations of …

George Eliot: A Biography, Graham Handley

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

This is a massive study, what the author calls 'a topic for a biography' (x). It occupied four years of his time, during which he obviously saturated himself in his subject, her period, her circle, her letters and all the contiguous material requisite for a full investigation. The result in the mass is curiously unsatisfactory. To adapt Henry James's celebrated dictum on Middlemarch, this is not a treasure house of detail but it is an indifferent whole. Undigested and indigestible, it reminds me of the Empress Messalina's infamous innuendo (according to Juvenal) that after a night spent in the brothels …

'Dear Cara': A Newly Discovered Letter, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

At the beginning of the year a donation was made to Coventry's Herbert Art Gallery and Museum of a box of papers relating to the Fridlanders, a nineteenth-century Coventry watch-making family. Annie Fridlander was a friend of Charles and Caroline (known as Cara) Bray and of Cara's sister, Sara Hennell.1t was not surprising, therefore, to find that some of the letters in the box were written by them to Annie. What was quite unexpected was to discover a tiny envelope containing a short letter from Marian Evans (George Eliot) to Cara Bray, her beloved Coventry friend.

The envelope and letter …

The Dead Hand In Middlemarch, David Clifford

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Edward Casaubon dies early in Book V of Middlemarch. Occurring where it does, it effectively bisects the novel; and indeed, it is a pivotal event in Dorothea's history. His will erects her central dilemma. She faces a choice, forced upon her by her deceased husband, between his money and his cousin. The significant detail is that even in death, Mr. Casaubon continues to exert control over the options open to Dorothea, and the locus of that control is her property.

The title of Book V, 'The Dead Hand', is taken as referring explicitly to this immortal control by Mr. Casaubon …

University Of Adelaide, Seventeenth Australasian Victorlian Studies Conference Report, Rosalind De Sailly

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The seventeenth conference of the Australasian Victorian Studies Association was held at the University of Adelaide in February 1996. The conference theme 'The Victorians and Science' inspired several papers on George Eliot's relation to matters scientific.

Barbara Garlick (Senior Tutor, University of Queensland) examined passages from Daniel Deronda in her paper 'George Eliot's Optics and the "Solidity of Objects'“. Dr. Garlick premissed her account of Eliot's optics on Lewes's theory of vision as a psychological act which interiorizes the external world according to intuitions and ideas. Vision was used to demonstrate how ways of seeing structure the narrative as they …

Review Of George Eliot: A Life, Rosemary Ashton

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Fifty years after John Cross's hagiographic George Eliot's Life as Related in her Letters and Journals (1885), Gordon Haight planned a more forthright biography but first found that it would be necessary to re-edit those letters and journals expurgated by Cross and search out material unavailable or unmentioned by Cross. The results was first the seven volumes of The George Eliot Letters in 1954-55 and, in 1968, George Eliot: A Biography, the then definitive life. More material has been coming to light since, notably (but not only) the two supplemental volumes of the Letters Haight added in 1978, and there …

Annual Report 1995, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

I would like to begin this report with something exciting to say but Annual General Meetings, with which our year inevitably begins, are never exciting events. In 1995 it all went smoothly - the only change being the retirement of Kathleen Porter as Vice Chairman and the appointment of Joan Bunn in her place. After the business meeting John Smith, Curator of Stamford Museum, who had closely followed the filming of the TV Middlemarch in the town, showed us his collection of slides and entertained us with an interesting commentary. Middlemarchmania had not quite died.

In March we heard of …

American Branch Report, Linda K. Robertson

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The American branch of the George Eliot Fellowship met for dinner at Stetson's Restaurant in Chicago on December 28, 1995. There was no formal programme but the evening included the traditional toast, the delivery of greetings from members who were unable to attend, and lively conversation. Those in attendance were Harriet Williams, Shoshana Knapp, Gail Elizabeth Korn, Jean Armold, and Linda K. Robertson. Gail Korn and Jean Arnold volunteered to prepare Special Session proposals for the 1996 Modem Language Association meeting in Washington, D.C. 19

Late-Victorian Plans For A George Eliot Memorial Library, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

On 5 March 1896 a paragraph appeared in the Daily News from a correspondent who wrote:

Will you allow me through your columns to appeal to the countless admirers of one of England's greatest teachers and of the world's most perfect artists? That portion of 'Leafy Warwickshire' in the midst of which little Marian Evans drew her first inspiration, literally beneath some of the very oaks which formed part of the classic Forest of Arden, has of late years proved to be a teeming storehouse of mineral wealth, and a large and vastly increasing industrial population at the present moment …

Hardy And Eliot: The Eye Of Narcissus' Looking-Glass, Nicola Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Hardy was both surprised and offended by the comparisons made between Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) and the novels of George Eliot; indeed, several critics went so far as to ascribe this new work to the acknowledged master in a complimentary manner but this failed to placate the aspiring newcomer. But most galling of all was the response it elicited from Henry James. From the very beginning, James took exception to the formal technique adopted by the writer who would become his greatest rival. He offered the most acerbic and derogatory commentary when he defined Hardy's first major success …

Selected Bibliography Of Theory And Criticism In Postcolonial Studies, Steven Tötösy De Zepetnek, Slaney Chadwick Ross

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No abstract provided.

Report Of A Lecture On "George Eliot At The National Portrait Gallery", Elizabeth Gundrey

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

In an excellent lecture John Cooper of the National Portrait Gallery showed all the authenticated portraits of George Eliot, contrasting them with those of other women writers of the time such as Charlotte Bronte and Agnes Strickland and quoting contemporaries' views on how good a likeness each was.

The portraits included an early silhouette given to the Gallery by a niece of John Cross; an 1842 watercolour given by Caroline Bray, too delicate to be put on public display; D'Albert Durade's Geneva portrait, painted when she was still mourning her father and struggling with religious doubts; the celebrated Samuel Lawrence …

George Eliot Birthday Luncheon: The Toast To The Immortal Memory, Beryl Gray

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

A friendly neighbor, who knew I was fond of “old things”, recently offered to let me look at a yellowing, crisply fragile newspaper that was in her possession. Unfolded, the crimbling broadsheet proved to be a copy of the Daily Mail for Wednesday, 23 June 1897- the issue commemorating Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. I gingerly perused it, enjoying it as a period curiosity without really expecting to see anything of specific interest- until I got to page seven, which presented an article headed “Women in the Queen’s Reign. Some Who Have Made Victorian History”.

The piece- which is about thirty …