George Eliot

Jean Arnold taught in the Department of English at California State University, San Bernardino, California and at Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, CA.  She is author of Victorian Jewelry, Identity, and the Novel: Prisms of Culture (2011).Lila Marz Harper is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at Central Washington University, USA and Thesis Editor for the Graduate School.  She is author of Solitary Travelers: Nineteenth-Century Women’s Travel Narratives and the Scientific Vocation (2001). She edited the Broadview edition of Edwin Abbott's Flatland (2009) and is a Distinguished Bibliographic Indexer and Section Head for the MLA International Bibliography.

“The aim of the collection is clearly to demonstrate that George Eliot is essential not only to the study of the Victorian period but also to a wide range of disciplines now, which helps to explain why the editors chose to focus on the categories they chose. On the occasion of Eliot’s two-hundredth birthday, the collection registers our continued commitment and indebtedness to this unique artist, thinker, and person.” (William Lee Hughes, Victorian Studies, Vol. 63 (1), 2020)“This collection provides many thought-provoking avenues for future Eliot research, especially in its insights into Eliot’s engagement with the periodical press. … Nevertheless, everyone from new readers of Eliot to established scholarswill have much to learn from this collection.” (Michael Martel, Victorian Periodicals Review, Vol. 53 (2), 2020)

• 1. Introduction - Jean Arnold and Lila Harper.- 2. "A Thousand Tit-Bits": George Eliot and the NMew Journalism - Alexis Easley.- 3. George Eliot's Literary Legacy: Poetic Perception and Self Fashioning in the 1870s - Wendy S. Williams.- 4. George Eliot as "worthy scholar": Note Taking and the Composition of Romola - Andrew Thompson.- 5. Egyptian Mythology in Eliot's Major Works - Molly Youngkin.- 6. Organic Realism in Middlemarch - Jean Arnold.- 7. Eliot's Natural History - Lila Harper.- 8. Handling George Eliot's Fiction - Peter Capuano.- 9. "It was all over with Wildfire": Horse Accidents in George Eliot's Fiction - Nancy Henry.- 10. The Function of Dogs in George Eliot's Fiction - Sarah Hakansson.- 11. The Ambivalence of Water in George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss - Odile Rivalain Boucher.- 12. Hints of Same-Sex Attraction and Transgender Trains in George Eliot's Characters - Constance Fulmer.- 13. "Upright Realism": The Influence of George Eliot on Polish Literature - Alexandra Budrewicz.