Silly Novels by Lady Novelists and Other Essays

Mary Ann Evans (1819–80), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and translator. The author of many novels which are considered key to the English literary canon, including Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, Eliot is widely considered one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.

'As one comes back to (Eliot’s) books after years of absence they pour out, even against our expectation, the same store of energy and heat, so that we want more than anything to idle in the warmth.' (Virginia Woolf)