Reading George Eliot's work was described by one Victorian critic as
like the feeling of entering the confessional in which the novelist sees
and hears all the secrets of human psychology--'that roar which lies on
the other side of silence'. This new biography of George Eliot goes
beyond the much-told story of her life. It gives an account of what it
means to become a novelist, and to think like a novelist: in particular
a realist novelist for whom art exists not for art's sake but in the
exploration and service of human life. It shows the formation and the
workings of George Eliot's mind as it plays into her creation of some of
the greatest novels of the Victorian era.
When at the age of 37 Marian Evans became George Eliot, this change
followed long mental preparation and personal suffering. During this
time she related her power of intelligence to her capacity for feeling:
discovering that her thinking and her art had to combine both. That was
the great ambition of her novels--not to be mere pastimes or fictions
but experiments in life and helps in living, through the deepest account
of human complexity available. Philip Davis's illuminating new biography
will enable you both to see through George Eliot's eyes and to feel what
it is like to be seen by her, in the imaginative involvement of her
readers with her characters.
