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Review Of George Eliot's Middlemarch: A Guide For Students And Readers Of The Novel, Josie Billington

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Among certain readers of this review, those already equipped with personal computers capable of launching Cruise missiles at the twitch of a mouse, my opening paragraph will, if anything, pucker lips. But among the uninitiated it will probably furrow brows. For some, it will be more than enough to learn that the minimum system requirements for using this CD-ROM are a Pentium processor running at 100 MHz; a Graphics display card capable of 800 x 600 resolution in HiColor (16 bit); the installation of QuickTime 3 (which can be downloaded from the disc, if necessary); an 8 x speed CD-ROM …

The Folio Society Edition Of George Eliot's Fiction

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Millennium has provided a number of reasons for celebration, but for members of the Fellowship and admirers of George Eliot generally the year 2000 will see two signal recognitions of her status. Before it is out, the Oxford Reader s Companion to George Eliot, under the general editorship of John Rignall and with contributions from informed enthusiasts and scholars all over the world, will be issued and will provide a permanent commentary on and record of her life and works. And now the Folio Society, publishers of attractive editions, generally with illustrations by gifted engravers, have issued in January, …

George Eliot And Archery, Arthur G. Credland

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

As a practicing archer with a keen interest in the history of the sport it has struck me that the importance of archery to the development of Eliot's final novel Daniel Deronda (1876) has not been properly appreciated. It provides the context for Gwendolen Harleth's fateful encounter with Grand-court, first at the Brackenshaw archery meeting where she strikes three successive golds (central hits), and subsequently at the archery ball, where he singles her out as a dance partner. Later, it is in the course of the roving archery match at Cardell Chase that she discovers the existence of his mistress …

A Family's Eye View Of George Eliot, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

There have been very many views expressed over the years about George Eliot - her genius, her behaviour and, inevitably, her looks. But what were the views of her family back in Nuneaton? It is well known that her brother Isaac, then very much the Victorian patriarch, dismissed her from the Evans family when he knew about her liaison with G. H. Lewes. They could not subsequently be unaware of her fame and there may have been many criticisms of her expressed within the family circle.

Some family letters still exist and are in my possession, but there are not …

Wreath-Laying In Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, Chris Smith

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

The Guest of Honour was The Rt Hon. Chris Smith, MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The Address he gave is summarized below:

Mr. Smith is a great admirer of George Eliot and it is said that he takes with him on holiday each year one of George Eliot's novels! He began by noting that he was standing next to the memorial stone to Henry James and he reminded us of James's admiration for George Eliot. Henry James wrote on 5 March 1873 'a marvellous mind throbs in every page of Middlemarch. It raises the standard of …

The Margins Of George Eliot: Editing The Journals, Margaret Harris

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Margins are back in fashion: it's no longer marginal to be marginal. Postcolonial theory has had the effect of demonstrating the relation between the imperial centre and the periphery of empire to be one of interaction and mutual reaction, not of straightout dominance by the one of the Other. Similarly, in textual theory, marginalia and other apparatus are read in a dialogic or intertextual relation to the text and do not simply take their place in a hierarchy subordinate to it. D. C. Greetham goes further, claiming that 'these days, the margins are a peculiarly privileged position, as the formalist …

Annual Report 1999, Kathleen Adams

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

During 1999 we were unusually busy in planning the extra events to take place in 2000. Before I began this report I had spent a few weeks updating the Story of the George Eliot Fellowship which had been published for our fiftieth anniversary in 1980 and now needed a further 20 busy years added. So, as I began the report of activities for 1999 I had many other years buzzing around in my head. However, 1999 is now clear of those seventy years, and I am happy to begin with the news that 1999 was another profitable year for the …

Conference Report George Eliot And Her Work: Anakara Turkey, March 1999, Laurence Raw

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

George Eliot's works are not well-known in Turkey, except for The Mill on the Floss, which is regularly studied in university departments of English Literature as part of an introductory course to the English novel, and Silas Mamer, which is occasionally included in postgraduate courses in nineteenth-century literature. There have been only four published translations of her novels - three of The Mill on the Floss (in 1970, 1975 and 1981) and one of Silas Mamer (1977), plus an introductory guide to her work, which appeared as long ago as 1949.

The main aim of the two-day 'George Eliot and …

Review Of George Eliot And Intoxication: Dangerous Drugs For The Condition Of England, Kathleen Mccormack

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Famously insisting to her friend Barbara Bodichon that our 'highest calling' is 'to do without opium', George Eliot is not a writer whom one immediately associates with intoxication, although one of her earliest stories, 'Janet' s Repentance' in Scenes of Cle rical Life, memorably dramatizes the addictive and destructive power of alcohol in the lives of Janet and her husband, the lawyer Dempster. Kathleen McCormack's study casts its net wider than such straightforward representations of drink and drunkenness to explore the tissue of references to, and images of, intoxication, and the drugs that induce it, throughout the fiction. Intoxication, with …

The Twenty-Eight George Eliot Memorial Lecture, 1999, Josie Billington

The George Eliot Review Online, ISSN: 2831-5375

Middlemarch is widely recognized as being one of the most strenuously narrated novels in English literature. Many of the most moving, and most quoted, lines of the novel are the product of direct narrational intervention and the reader is aware of the surrounding, solicitous presence of the author-narrator throughout the novel. Throughout this paper, I am going to be looking closely at a number of short passages from the novel in order to try to establish the 'tasks' - as I call them - which George Eliot undertakes and fulfils through her narrator in Middlemarch. But I should like to …

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 …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group, Volume 21 (2000), Virginia Gunn, Laurel Horton, Xenia E. Cord, Phyllis S. Herda, Ethel Ewert Abrahams, Rachel K. Pannabecker, Susan Price Miller, Lisa Gabbert, Marsha Macdowell

Uncoverings Journal

Preface by Virginia Gunn

Research Papers

An "Old-Fashioned Quilting" in 1910 by Laurel Horton

Textiles and Cooperative Commerce in Colonial America: The Example of William McCormick by Xenia E. Cord

Creating a New Tradition: Quilting in Tonga by Phyllis S. Herda

"Better Choose Me": Addictions to Tobacco, Collecting, and Quilting, 1880-1920 by Ethel Ewert Abrahams and Rachel K. Pannabecker

Hubert Ver Mehren and Home Art Studios by Susan Price Miller

"Petting the Fabric": Medium and the Creative Process by Lisa Gabbert

Quilts and Their Stories: Revealing a Hidden History by Marsha MacDowell

Authors and editor

In memoriam: Bill Charles Garoutte …

White Women, Black Revolutionaries: Sex And Politics In Four Novels By Nadine Gordimer, Nancy Topping Bazin

English Faculty Publications

As early as 1959, the white South African novelist, essayist, and short story writer Nadine Gordimer wrote an essay, "Where Do Whites Fit In?" As the black struggle for power intensified and finally achieved its primary goal of black majority rule in 1994, Gordimer continued to reflect upon this question. Her eighth novel, July's People (1981), is a psychological and political fable. It celebrates a white woman's readiness to reject the relationships and privileges that bind her to the white world and her readiness to embrace the new South Africa of an emancipated black majority. The novels written before July's …

Modern Feminism, Religious Pluralism, And Scripture, Jo Ann Davidson

Journal of the Adventist Theological Society

No abstract provided.

Smoke, Rénee Olander

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Excerpts From "Death Journal", Nancy Olthoff

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Why Are Those Women So Angry? (Alienating People Of Good Will), Janet Bing

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Until quite recently, I dismissed criticisms of "angry feminists" as a sexist stereotype. I was tired of hearing people say, "I believe in equal pay for equal work, but I dislike those bra-burning feminists!" Perhaps I'm too young, but almost all of my friends are feminists, and I have yet to meet anyone who has burned her bra, so this comment always strikes me as bizarre. However, recently I have begun to think seriously about the power of stereotypes and the ability of people to disregard messages they do not want to hear. I now realize that feminists …

Sharing The Light: Representations Of Women And Virtue In Early China, By Lisa Raphals (Book Review), Jane Geaney

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

Lisa Raphals' Sharing the Light is a useful collection of the latest available information regarding the role of women in early Chinese history. In contrast to conventional interpretations, Raphals aims to demonstrate that in early China women were not as socially constrained as later periods portrayed them. The focus and the main virtue of her work lies in collating and interpreting a significant amount of information on this topic.

The Gendered World Of Disney: A Content Analysis Of Gender Themes In Full-Length Animated Disney Feature Films, Beth A. Wiersma

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research has focused on the gender messages portrayed in television programs, cartoons, advertisements, literature, picture books, and fairy tales. One venue that has not received as much attention in the research is the Disney 1 full-length animated feature films. This is a qualitative study of the gender themes and portrayal of gender roles in full-length animated feature films by The Walt Disney Company. The findings in this research indicate there has been little change in the stereotyped portrayals of Disney characters from the release of the first full-length animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 to …

Black Women In The Economy: Facing Glass Ceilings In Academia, Bette Woody, Diane Brown, Teresa Green

Trotter Review

The shrinking population of Black male doctoral degree holders may hold much of the key to the problems of Black women. Declines in Black male interest in doctoral degrees, has clearly not spelled gains for the recruitment of Black female scholars. New evidence of these patterns is visible in the latest government data on academic achievement of Black women and teaching job success. While Black women are achieving at high rates, they are also systematically by-passed by an expanded recruitment of African and Caribbean males to fill teaching positions in doctoral and research institutions. This new trend has probably reduced …

Introduction, James Jennings

Trotter Review

We are proud to share with our readers the second annual issue of the Trotter Review. Since the first issue in 1984, the Trotter Review has grown to become a popular journal with a national and international readership. The journal has been particularly praised for its presentation and balance of scholarship informed by activism. We are currently planning future issues along the following themes: the experiences of Black children and the Black community with public schools; the historical and contemporary relationships between the Black and Native-American communities in the United States; and the role of Black educators in community …

The Social And Economic Status Of Eritrean Women: Advances And Reversals, Asgedet Stefanos

Trotter Review

In assessing the post-independence status of women in Eritrea, I want to pose two questions. First, how did the leadership of the national liberation movement, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), embark on promoting women's emancipation, given the attitudes firmly rooted in the minds of both men and women that ran counter to the idea of an emancipated woman? Secondly, what changes were established in Eritrean women's public and personal lives during the national liberation struggle — in politics, economics, and the social realm?

This is an excerpt of the speech delivered by Asgedet Stefanos at the 20th Anniversary of …