CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY 1
CHAPTER II.
CHILDHOOD AND EARLY HOME 9
CHAPTER III.
YOUTHFUL STUDIES AND FRIENDSHIPS 22
CHAPTER IV.
TRANSLATION OF STRAUSS AND FEUERBACH--TOUR ON
THE CONTINENT 44
CHAPTER V.
THE "WESTMINSTER REVIEW" 59
CHAPTER VI.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES 77
CHAPTER VII.
SCENES OF CLERICAL LIFE 91
CHAPTER VIII.
ADAM BEDE 106
CHAPTER IX.
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS 123
CHAPTER X.
SILAS MARNER 137
CHAPTER XI.
ROMOLA 148
CHAPTER XII.
HER POEMS 161
CHAPTER XIII.
FELIX HOLT AND MIDDLEMARCH 175
CHAPTER XIV.
DANIEL DERONDA 192
CHAPTER XV.
LAST YEARS 204
GEORGE ELIOT.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Speaking of the contributions made to literature by her own sex, George
Eliot, in a charming essay written in 1854, awards the palm of
intellectual pre-eminence to the women of France. "They alone," says the
great English author, "have had a vital influence on the development of
literature. For in France alone the mind of woman has passed, like an
electric current, through the language, making crisp and definite what
is elsewhere heavy and blurred; in France alone, if the writings of
women were swept away, a serious gap would be made in the national
history."
The reason assigned by George Eliot for this literary superiority of
Frenchwomen consists in their having had the courage of their sex. They
thought and felt as women, and when they wrote, their books became the
fullest expression of their womanhood. And by being true to themselves,
by only seeking inspiration from their own life-experience, instead of
servilely copying that of men, their letters and memoirs, their novels
and pictures have a distinct, nay unique, value, for the student of art
and literature. Englishwomen, on the other hand, have not followed the
spontaneous impulses of nature. They have not allowed free play to the
peculiarly feminine element, preferring to mould their intellectual
products on the masculine pattern. For that reason, says George Eliot,
their writings are "usually an absurd exaggeration of the masculine
style, like the swaggering gait of a bad actress in male attire."