George Eliot: A Biography (Penguin Literary Biographies) - Softcover

Haight, Gordon S.

3.96

57 ratings by Goodreads

9780140580259: George Eliot: A Biography (Penguin Literary Biographies)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140580255 ISBN 13: 9780140580259

Publisher: Penguin, 1986

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George Eliot (1819-1880) was the daughter of a well-off estate agent and had an easier childhood than contemporaries such as Charles Dickens. And she won worldwide fame in early middle age for her fiction, which includes Silas Marner and Adam Bede in addition to Middlemarch. But she faced profound hardships. She was so homely that Henry James called her "horse-faced." She could never marry the man she loved, the writer George Henry Lewes, because a quirk of English law made it impossible for him to get a divorce, though his adulterous wife had two children with another man. When Eliot lived with Lewes, anyway, she was shunned by friends and family. She suffered from depression and other illnesses, including kidney stones that caused lasting pain. When she remarried soon after Lewes's death, her second husband jumped off a balcony into the Grand Canal in Venice on their honeymoon, an apparent suicide attempt. Throughout all of it she showed exemplary patience, kindness, and literary integrity. Haight describes all of this with rich insight and a restrained eloquence. His book avoids all the sins of modern biography, including special pleading, unmerited speculation, and drawing false parallels his subject's art and life. It has more than 600 pages but never becomes tedious or overstuffed with extraneous detail. And Haight knows just when to turn the floor over to Eliot and let her speak through her own writings. An except from a letter to her closest friend is typical and seems especially fitting for New Year's Day: I have read many wonderful books in 2006 but none more worthy of being written than this one.

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Book Description:

As the first biography of Eliot, Blind's 1883 work represents a successful contemporary's interpretation of the life and works of the renowned author. This work carefully examines Eliot's early life and the influences on her, and confirms her reputation as one of the most respected writers of her time.

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