A magnificent book . . . with all its imperfections Mar 29, 2008
There are imperfections because, like many great writers, George Eliot aspired to something that was almost too difficult ... George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans ... Indeed, all the principal characters of Middlemarch have a depth that is scarcely approached by English novelists before George Eliot. (Globe and Mail)
Shifting sands Mar 15, 2008
Yet its effect is nothing like the variety of perspectives offered in the classic 19th-century novels, where George Eliot or Tolstoy will use the technique to teach their readers and their characters to extend their sympathies beyond their usual limits. Here the characters inhabit their own worlds of zeal or fear or (in Musa's case) appetite and calculation. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
U.S. Dickens collection to be sold at auction Feb 28, 2008
Among the highlights is The Uncommercial Traveller (1861), inscribed by Dickens to novelist George Eliot. Its presale estimate is $100,000 to $150,000. (Globe and Mail -- Entertainment)
Readers vote on top books Feb 20, 2008
Middlemarch - George Eliot 72. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 73. (Melbourne Herald Sun)
Name changesIs it easier to make a reputation if you have an unusual name? Feb 3, 2008
Why Marian Evans published as George Eliot ... Marian Evans published as George Eliot, not so much because female writers couldn't find a market for their work, but because she was a free-thinking radical, living with a married man, who needed the protection of a pseudonym. (BBC News -- UK)
George Eliot / Mary Ann Evans Jan 22, 2008
Brief biography of the life and works of author George Eliot, one of the world's best British short-story writers, famous for Middlemarch and Silas Marner. George Eliot, novelist and short story writer, was the pen name of Mary Ann (or Marian) Evans ... Mary Ann Evans, (1819-1880), who wrote under the pseudonym George Eliot, was born on November 22, 1819, in Arbury Farm in Warwickshire in the Midlands. (Suite101.com)
Sex ... but properly, please Jan 21, 2008
But what has clinched his reputation are robust TV retellings of literary classics by Dickens ("Bleak House"), Thackeray ("Vanity Fair"), Defoe ("Moll Flanders"), George Eliot ("Middlemarch"). and Jane Austen. (CNN -- Showbiz)
'The king of adapters' Jan 19, 2008
" Davies is in a position to know. At 71, he reigns as the King of Adapters. His long list of Emmy- and Peabody-winning projects includes adaptations of modern fiction such as the splendid British miniseries "House of Cards" (and two sequels) as well as the Pierce Brosnan-starring thriller "The Tailor of Panama" and the two "Bridget Jones" films. But what has clinched his reputation are robust TV retellings of literary classics by Dickens ("Bleak House"), Thackeray ("Vanity Fair"), Defoe ("Moll... (Athens Banner-Herald)
Church activities: Jan. 19, 2008 Jan 19, 2008
The Friends in Christ Sunday School Class at First Baptist Church of St. Albans will begin a study of a book written by George Eliot (Mary Ellen Evans) titled Middlemarch. The book was written in the late 19th century about small-town life in England in the 1830s. (Charleston Gazette, WV -- News)
Interesting times Jan 17, 2008
" It is too early for Chinese writers to have moved beyond this conflict, he continues. "For example Kafka and Cao Xueqin, [the author of Dream of the Red Chamber], George Eliot and [the Tang dynasty poet] Li Bai. how are contemporary Chinese writers to find their own way, when surrounded by such completely different influences. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Unlock the voicesof the Arab street Jan 14, 2008
What a bittersweet twist on the gender play of writers like George Sand or George Eliot and others who adopted male names, personae and wardrobes to splinter taboos. Here was a Saudi man pretending to be a woman so that he could impress upon his countrymen how difficult it was to be female. (Globe and Mail)
The great unknown Jan 12, 2008
When George Eliot (the pseudonym of Marian Evans) published Adam Bede in 1859, her true identity was known only to a very few. Eliot reported that a friend, Agnes Owen, had unknowingly discussed the story with her and "thought I was the father of a family - was sure I was a man who had seen a great deal of society etc." Her error seems proof of Eliot's creative achievement. (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
Newsweek: Was Proust a neuroscientist? Jan 9, 2008
In the book, author describes how novelist , as well as chef Auguste Escoffier, composer Igor Stravinsky, and writers Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Gertrude Stein and built upon the scientific knowledge of their time to make discoveries of their own in the field of neuroscience. Proust's understanding of memory, Lehrer argues, even surpassed that of the scientists of his day. (MSNBC -- Technology)
The reading cure Jan 5, 2008
"Perhaps the most convincing argument for the effectiveness of bibliotherapy comes from writers themselves. There's the case of George Eliot, for example, who recovered from the grief of losing her husband George Henry Lewes by reading Dante with a young friend, John Cross, who subsequently married her. "Her sympathetic delight in stimulating my newly awakened enthusiasm for Dante did something to distract her mind from sorrowful memories," Cross later wrote. "The divine poet took us to a new... (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Do you read in the bathroom? Jan 3, 2008
Not all of them copped to it, but Meg Wolitzer gave the best answer: "A combination of George Eliot and the instructions on the Tampax box. One is a bit more complex than the other - but I'm not saying which.". 20. (AZCentral -- Entertainment)
FUTURE'S HERE! Jan 1, 2008
I guess we shouldn't make any predictions, because as George Eliot wrote, 'Prophecy is the most gratuitous form of error. " And, speaking of the future, the best quotes come from Forbes magazine this month. "The future. (New York Post -- Gossip)
FULL STORY > Jan 1, 2008
I guess we shouldn't make any predictions, because as George Eliot wrote, 'Prophecy is the. . (New York Post -- Gossip)
Literature is alright, still Dec 13, 2007
I recall one past Orange chair of judges enthusing that women were at last writing "big books", and wondering if the person was under the impression that George Eliot was a man. No one can have read everything, but, as with all juries, how can someone judge the originality or excellence of a work of fiction - two of the prize's main criteria - without extensive, assiduously cultivated, knowledge of what has gone before. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Of Dickens and Darwin Dec 8, 2007
George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens, authors who wrote during the Victorian era, appropriated many of the scientific arguments of their day into their works. Eliot and Hardy, in fact, showed interest and fascination with accounts of scientific invention and discovery, and their works implicitly comment on science and its effects on society. (The Scientist)
Unraveling a Raveled Sleeve Nov 26, 2007
A hundred curious readers have written to ask the same probing question: Is a worn sleeve raveled or unraveled. Old copy editors never go hungry. (Human Events Online)
Translation project to bring cream of foreign writers to Arabs Nov 22, 2007
Other titles due out in Arabic this year are by Nadine Gordimer, Khaled Hosseini, Albert Camus, George Eliot, Albert Einstein, Jacques Lacan and Spinoza. Muhammad al-Mazrouei, of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, which is financing the translation and publishing project, said: "We want to give Arabic readers the opportunity to read and enjoy a breadth of quality writing from around the world in their mother tongue. Arabic is a beautifully expressive language, and one that should... (Guardian Unlimited)
Concert Series spotlights musical poetry with Delmhorst's Strange Conversation Nov 17, 2007
I didn't even know George Eliot wrote poetry,' she says of the song inspired by Eliot ... When I went up there, I found this poetry anthology that had some poems by George Eliot. (Rhinelander Daily News, WI)
Hitchens provides for the 'Portable Atheist' Nov 6, 2007
And who, really, will turn away from George Eliot and James Joyce and Joseph Conrad in order to rescrutinize the bare and narrow and constipated and fearful world of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Osama bin Laden. It is in the hope of strengthening and arming the resistance to the faith-based, and to faith itself, that this anthology of combat with humanity's oldest enemy is respectfully offered. (USA Today -- Life)
SWANN IN YOUR HEAD Nov 4, 2007
To elucidate his ideas, Lehrer reviews the lives of five writers - Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Marcel Proust, Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf - along with painter Paul Cezanne, composer Igor Stravinsky and the great French chef Auguste Escoffier. Each story relates to current neuroscience. (New York Post -- Opinions)
Monstrous cunning Oct 27, 2007
For me, the effect of the comparison was counter-productive: Bellow instantly seemed as old and venerable as George Eliot. And now we have what is in some ways a Victorian novel: 600 pages, zillions of characters and a plot that offers a key to the variously contested mythologies of American involvement in south-east Asia (Vietnam, principally, but with substantial sections in the Philippines as well). (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Salon's guide to Nobel winner Doris Lessing Oct 13, 2007
Lessing brings the microscopic intensity of George Eliot and the combative sexual consciousness of D.H. Lawrence to bear on English culture, whether the context is the provincially hierarchical "settler" society of Southern Rhodesia in A Proper Marriage or the beleaguered bohemia of "free women" in The Golden Notebook ... Yet Lessing herself once dismissed George Eliot, to whom she is so often compared, as "good as far as she goes"; she prefers to claim the more cosmopolitan influence of Tolstoy... (Salon)
Emma Thompson Oct 3, 2007
But the point where this came into focus was at Cambridge, where she discovered two major influences: George Eliot and feminist criticism. She was plunged into a 19th-century moral universe and, at the same time, filled with a rage against the injustice done to women down the ages. (Guardian Unlimited)
Emily Bront hits the heights in poll Aug 10, 2007
20 Daniel Deronda George Eliot, 1876. Guardian Unlimited. (Guardian Unlimited)
It's Never Too Late...at San Jac Jul 26, 2007
"The world is out there for you," she said, "you just have to take the initiative and believe what Mary Ann Evans, whom some might know as George Eliot, said a long time ago: 'It is never too late to be what you might have been.'". For more information about It's Never Too Late, call 281-998-6150 ext. (Pasadena Citizen, TX)
Harry Potter frenzy is familiar story Jul 16, 2007
Serial fiction enjoyed a heyday during the Victorian era a century and a half ago, when the world's best authors, including Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Tolstoy, released their novels a section at a time in regular periodicals. Dickens in particular was "the Rowling of his day," according to Michael Lund, a professor of English at Longwood University in Virginia, who specializes in the form. (SunSpot.net)
Q&A: curriculum reform Jul 12, 2007
The issue explained: Secondary school curriculum reform. Donald MacLeod looks at what 11 to 14-year-old pupils can expect to learn under the latest reforms to the secondary school curriculum. (Guardian Unlimited -- UK)
The world already knows our secrets Jul 5, 2007
In 2001 a number of unpublished letters by George Eliot were acquired by the British Library. As one of the first people to see them I was excited and alarmed in equal measure. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
The Cultural Illiteracy of Atheist Christopher Hitchens Jul 1, 2007
"We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books." ... "We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and... (Townhall.com)
The great escape - part 2 Jun 23, 2007
Holed up in the venerably tacky Baron hotel with George Eliot for company, I made the transfixing discovery that she is not just the most serious, most intelligent, most grown-up, et cetera, writer of her age - she's funny. I became wedded to the book, reaching for it at the unearthly hour when taped muezzins were broadcast at full blast from the minarets of half a dozen competing mosques and the dawn orchestra of novelty car horns burped out the tune of "Hitler has only got one ball . . ."; I... (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Going to Court over fiction by a fictitious writer Jun 16, 2007
Mary Ann Evans used the gender-crossing pseudonym George Eliot to publish "Adam Bede" in 1859, when female authors still struggled to be taken seriously. Charlotte Bronte released "Jane Eyre" in 1847 under the name Currer Bell. (International Herald Tribune)
A keen wit turned on an age of indulgence May 19, 2007
" The roll-call of influences behind this novel makes perfect sense: Swift and Pope, Austen, George Eliot ("people tend to forget that Middlemarch itself was a historical novel") and Henry Fielding's masterpiece Tom Jones, which shares with The Scandal of the Season a wicked appreciation of the bawdy that I can't help but ask her about. She laughs: "Everyone comments on the sex. One thing I wanted to do was just to remind people that this was 100 years before Jane Austen, and people still had... (Sydney Morning Herald -- Entertainment)
Letters reveal Darwin's caring, comic side - in between agonising about his theory May 17, 2007
The list includes the eminent geologist Charles Lyell, the physician to Queen Victoria, Henry Holland, and the novelist George Eliot. The letters are invaluable for scholars aiming to trace the origin of Darwin's ideas. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Obituary: Philip Collins May 16, 2007
It may seem inconceivable now that there were those, even a few decades ago, who regarded Dickens as a first-rate entertainer but little more, and certainly unworthy of the kind of heavyweight scrutiny brought to bear on, say, Jane Austen or George Eliot. The fact that the flame of serious critical attention to Dickens was kept burning is very largely due to the indefatigable work that Collins did while lecturer and professor at Leicester University. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Creativity Coaching May 13, 2007
A Coach Can Teach You How To Reach Your Creative Potential. Creativity Coaches are life coaches who focus on one s creative evolution. (Suite101.com)
Curling up with a good ebook May 11, 2007
The one that was sent to me already had downloaded on to it four books by Arthur Conan Doyle, two Bront novels, 10 by Dickens, four apiece by George Eliot and DH Lawrence, three Dostoevskys, James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist and Ulysses, Jane Austen's complete works, and ditto Lewis Carroll, both big fat Tolstoys, five Thomas Hardy novels and quite a lot of poetry. That's a hefty bookshelf, accommodated in a device only a little over a centimetre thick and in breadth and depth about the... (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Chris Manos takes Manhattan May 3, 2007
There s a Chekhovian touch to his epic, a good bit of George Sand and sex (she was worshipped by this milieu) and maybe a touch of George Eliot. OK. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
'Shakespeare's sister' May 2, 2007
They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney, a few more about Jane Austen, a tribute to the Bronts and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford, a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell, and one would have done. But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
George Eliot's letters go online May 1, 2007
George Eliot also wrote Silas Marner and Daniel Deronda. Letters written by Middlemarch author George Eliot and the man she lived with, George Henry Lewes, can now be viewed online. (BBC News -- Entertainment)
God Is Not Great: Apr 26, 2007
We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books. Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind andsince there is no other metaphoralso the soul. (Slate)
We need to talk ... Apr 22, 2007
But, as always with Shriver, the possibilities are considered with a moral seriousness worthy of George Eliot. She is simultaneously shocked and thrilled by the comparison, 'George Eliot. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Mendes to direct Middlemarch film Apr 21, 2007
Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes has announced he plans to make the first big-screen version of the George Eliot novel Middlemarch. The director, who is married to Kate Winslet, is best known for directing US blockbuster films such as American Beauty and Jarhead. (BBC News -- Entertainment)
The fatal flaw Mar 31, 2007
Because of a feeling that novelists offer more insight into society by holding back for a couple of decades or more, as George Eliot did with Middlemarch (set circa 1830 but not published till 1871-2), or as Alan Hollighurst did with his 2005 novel The Line of Beauty (an elegant satire set on the political haut monde of the 1980s). Or is it that something about Blair defeats the imagination. (Guardian Unlimited)
* Ah! Levity is the leaven of Kundera's writing Mar 18, 2007
George Eliot regretted the "spots of commonness" that defaced her characters, but to Kundera, such ordinary defects establish our human commonality and enroll us in a community of feeling: Sancho Panza, though heartbroken, is of good cheer while keeping a vigil at the deathbed of Don Quixote. Novels insist on "the beauty of modest sentiments," and the novel is therefore the chosen art form of what Kundera, remembering his early life in Czechoslovakia, calls "small nations." Ignoring the... (Taipei Times, Taiwan -- World)
Sacrilege -- but let's read on Mar 11, 2007
Assigning points for each writer's ranking, and toting them up, Zane emerges with a consensus Top 10 that I give here in order beginning with No. 1: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy; Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert; War and Peace by Tolstoy; Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain; Hamlet by William Shakespeare; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust; The Stories of Anton Chekhov; Middlemarch by George Eliot. Zane also... (Orlando Sentinel)
- Can I make up my own mind? Writers' favourite books Mar 4, 2007
From the top 10 of all American and British authors, only George Eliot and Flannery O'Connor score consistently ... Middlemarch by George Eliot. (Guardian Unlimited)
Pride and Prejudice tops poll of nation's most precious books Mar 2, 2007
Instead, the top 100 bristles with provenly enduring quality, from Joseph Heller, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Kerouac, Lewis Carroll and AA Milne to John Steinbeck, Arthur Ransome, Joseph Conrad, Kazuo Ishiguro (for The Remains of the Day) and Conan Doyle. The last three titles to squeeze in are a characteristic mix: Hamlet, Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Victor Hugo's Les Mis;rables. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Books you can't live without: the top 100 Mar 1, 2007
20 Middlemarch George Eliot. 21 Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
Post-Jane Austen Novels Feb 25, 2007
It must be noted that Jane Austen and George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) circumvented these fates ... Though Jane Austen wrote during the Regency period about her contemporaries, George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Ann Evans) wrote during the Victorian Period ... George Eliot created the town of Middlemarch, a town caught in the social upheaval of Victorian England and the rise of the middle class (hence, the name. (Suite101.com)
Top authors name Anna Karenina as their favourite book Feb 24, 2007
The only woman to make the top ten was George Eliot with Middlemarch. Carey, who has won the Booker prize twice, picked Madame Bovary as his all time top book. (BBC News -- Entertainment)
Teachers fight back over classics Feb 17, 2007
Mr Johnson said writers such as George Eliot and Alexander Pope were "untouchable" in a curriculum shake-up ... QCA LIST OF CLASSIC AUTHORS Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Blake, Charlotte Brnte, Robert Burns, Geoffrey Chaucer, Kate Chopin, John Clare, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Eliot, Thomas Gray, Thomas Hardy, John Keats, John Masefield, Alexander Pope, Christina Rossetti, William Shakespeare (sonnets), Mary Shelley, Robert Louis... (BBC News -- UK)
Stuck on you Feb 17, 2007
Just as George Eliot found with Daniel Deronda, there's a crucial groin-located flaw in the plot - here because paternity and infidelity become increasingly pressing issues and it is uncertain which of the twins is in charge and when. But let's celebrate instead the refreshing medical competence and intellectual knowhow that underpin this patchy but commendable novel. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
G. Robert Stange, Tufts literature professor Feb 16, 2007
While there, Dr. Stange's essays, along with the efforts of a handful of other scholars, spawned academic interest in Victorian novelists such as Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and George Eliot. "When I went to graduate school, the novelists on the whole, and especially Dickens, were really out of favor," said Gerhard Joseph, a former student of Dr. Stange in Minnesota who is now an English professor at Lehman College and the City University of New York. (Boston Globe)
Shakespeare's sonnets join the classroom 'untouchables' Feb 6, 2007
These include classic pre-20th century literature such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Daniel Defoe and George Eliot, as well as algebra, geometry and equations in maths. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority will today publish a draft outline of new requirements for the 12 compulsory subjects that is intended to focus on basics. (Yahoo News -- Literature and Authors)
Shakespeare a must for all pupils, schools told Feb 5, 2007
Mr Johnson will say that essential elements of education include algebra and geometry in maths, and classic authors such as Charles Dickens and George Eliot in English. He has insisted that Shakespeare's sonnets, as well as his plays, should remain on the curriculum. (Guardian Unlimited -- UK)
Different Strokes Jan 31, 2007
He read Dickens and George Eliot in English. He was a luminous writer himself, in his letters, with flashes of rueful clarity about his mental condition: I have moments when I am twisted with enthusiasm or madness or prophecy, like a Greek oracle on his tripod. (New Yorker)
The mystery of Amos Barton Jan 7, 2007
Kathryn Hughes celebrates the arrival of George Eliot ... On February 5 the firm received a letter from its newest author declaring: "Whatever may be the success of my stories, I shall be resolute in preserving my incognito ... and accordingly I subscribe myself, best and most sympathising of editors, Yours very truly George Eliot." ... Whatever he may have guessed privately, it would be nearly another year before Blackwood was formally told that "George Eliot" was in fact none other than Marian... (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
