In Love with George Eliot

by Kathy O'Shaughnessy

Overview

A TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR

Who was the real George Eliot? In Love with George Eliot is a glorious debut novel which tells the compelling story of England’s greatest woman novelist as you’ve never read it before.

Marian Evans is a scandalous figure, living in sin with a married man, George Henry Lewes. She has shocked polite society, and women rarely deign to visit her. In secret, though, she has begun writing fiction under the pseudonym George Eliot. As Adam Bede’s fame grows, curiosity rises as to the identity of its mysterious writer. Gradually it becomes apparent that the moral genius Eliot is none other than the disgraced woman living with Lewes.

Now Evans’ tremendous celebrity begins. The world falls in love with her. She is the wise and great writer, sent to guide people through the increasingly secular, rudderless century, and an icon to her progressive feminist peers — with whom she is often in disagreement. Public opinion shifts. Her scandalous cohabitation is forgiven. But this idyll is not secure and cannot last. When Lewes dies, Evans finds herself in danger of shocking the world all over again.

Meanwhile, in another rudderless century, two women compete to arrive at an interpretation of Eliot as writer and as woman …

Everyone who has thrilled at being shown the world anew by George Eliot will thrill again at her presence, complex and compelling, here.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781925693843
Publisher:	Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Publication date:	11/01/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	611 KB

About the Author

Kathy O’Shaughnessy has reviewed books for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, Financial Times, Independent, The Observer, TLS, New Statesman, The Spectator, and others. She has worked as Deputy Editor on the Literary Review, Arts & Books Editor of Vogue, Literary Editor of The European, and Deputy Editor of The Telegraph Arts & Books. Her stories have been published in Faber’s First Fictions, and she edited and introduced Drago Stambuk’s poems, Incompatible Animals.

Editorial Reviews

08/24/2020

O’Shaughnessy crafts in her luminous debut an evocative portrait of English author George Eliot. After Marian Evans arrives in London from Coventry in 1851 to work on the Westminster Review, she falls in love with the married George Henry Lewes, a philosopher and writer, and they scandalize Victorian society by openly living together. After Marian publishes several novels in the 1860s under the pen name of George Eliot (the secret of her identity doesn’t last long, but the revelation doesn’t adversely affect her books’ popularity or literary acclaim), she and George meet Johnny Cross, a young banker who manages their finances and falls in love with Marian. But it’s Marian’s emotional and intellectual connection with George—not always perfect—that sustains her. After George dies in 1878, Johnny and Marian spend more time together, and, despite Johnny’s confusion about his sexual desires, he presses for marriage, to which Marian consents. While a present-day parallel narrative about an academic who’s writing a novel on Eliot adds little, O’Shaughnessy handles the passion and drama between Marian and Johnny with aplomb. Historical fiction fans won’t want to miss this. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

I devoured this, and it made me happy and excited. It reminded me of Toibin's The Master: its representations of the psychology of the characters, their shifting ground, variegated moods, seemed to work in something like the same way, and with the same fineness. It's really beautifully tender, subtle, imaginative, saturated authentically (to my mind anyway) in another time and thought-world.”
—Tessa Hadley, author of Late in the Day

“In Love with George Eliot is a clever, unconventional approach to the great novelist's life; it is easy to imagine that Marian Evans herself would have approved of the playful thoughtfulness with which Kathy O’Shaughnessy brings the private person behind George Eliot’s public success alive.”
—Dr Ruth Scurr, author of John Aubrey: My Own Life

“Classy, beautifully written and richly imagined—a novel that opens a door onto the past.”
—Nicci Gerrard, author of The Twilight Hour

“At the beginning of her career, the words of her fiction became a kind of smoke screen for Marian Evans, whose journey from anonymous obscurity to worldwide fame under her masculine pen name is delicately charted in Kathy O’Shaughnessy’s debut novel, In Love with George Eliot. Working back and forth between the present-day world of fractious Eliot scholars and the 19th-century world of their emotionally fragile subject, O’Shaughnessy concentrates on the private ambitions and uncertainties of her characters, drawing on Eliot’s letters for inspiration.”
—New York Times‘Best Books to Give This Year’

“O’Shaughnessy crafts in her luminous debut an evocative portrait of English author George Eliot…passion and drama… Historical fiction fans won’t want to miss this.”
—Publishers Weekly

“O’Shaughnessy's leisurely, thoroughly researched and sympathetic debut novel imagines some key periods in the life of Marian Evans, better known as novelist George Eliot… a record of the complex and often fraught emotional life of a notable novelist.”
—Margaret QuammeBooklist

“[A] sensitive, impeccably researched and deeply pleasurable debut novel… As the best historical novels do, it absorbs the reader to such an extent that, even if they know the outline of the story, each page is a revelation.”
—The Economist

“Compelling… a tender and haunting study.”
—The Financial Times

“The Eliot strand predominates as if Eliot herself was dictating like a whispering ghost.”
—Mary Leland, Irish Examiner

“The novelist enters where biographers fear to tread… There is no doubt that O’Shaughnessy has saturated herself in the most important biographical and critical literature on Eliot.”
—John Mullan, The Guardian

“A layered, tender portrait.”
—Dani Garavelli, The Herald

“Richly and sensitively described… O’Shaughnessy does us the favour of reminding us what an underrated erotic writer Eliot is.”
—The Sunday Telegraph

“An accomplished tribute to one of our greatest authors.”
—The Mail on Sunday

“This sensitive fictionalization… is thoroughly absorbing.”
—Daily Mail

“A revealing debut novel… a fascinating read.”
—Mariella Frostrup, BBC Radio 4 Open Book

“She gives a new life to these long dead, overdressed people, writing of them with an attentive and loving eye, forgiving them and understanding. Her take on the central mystery of Eliot’s later life—marriage to Johnny Cross, a family friend to both her and Lewes and 20 years her junior, and on Cross’ suicide attempt on their Italian honeymoon—is painfully believable.”
—Helen Elliot, The Age

“O’Shaughnessy’s writing is full of delicious words… and brilliant descriptions. She is full of keen insights into Evans’s character… This is an astute, skilful book.”
—Literary Review

“Henry James was but one of many beguiled by Marian Evans (aka George Eliot)… In lucid, unshowy prose, O’Shaughnessy brings them all to life.”
—Rose Shepherd, Saga

“In Love with George Eliot is a real pleasure to read, even if you haven’t read any of her novels.”
—Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers

“In Love with George Eliot is a feverishly intense and beautifully rendered first novel, especially in its detail and sensitivity, that brings to life the woman and the legend.”
—Marie Matteson, Readings

“In this beautifully imagined novel, the rich intellectual world in which Marian lived is brought alive.” FOUR STARS
—Melinda Woledge, Good Reading

“Crack this one open at the beach and get ready to become obsessed with the story of England’s greatest woman novelist.”
—Rebecca Varcoe, Frankie Magazine

From the Publisher