BOOK OF THE WEEK THE MARRIAGE QUESTION: GEORGE ELIOT'S DOUBLE LIFE by Clare Carlisle (Allen Lane £25, 384pp). It had all the drama of an illicit teenage elopement. At dawn on June 20, 1854 ...

George Eliot wrote those sentences in her 1872 masterpiece, Middlemarch, an examination of marriage unmatched by any other. ... the courtship-centered drama, ...

When George Eliot agreed (reluctantly, by all accounts) to have her portrait made in 1865, she surely never imagined that her face would be forever linked with her published works.

In a gathering at a Soho bookshop, Eliot met George Henry Lewes, another of the regular contributors. A lively commentator on philosophy and literature, Lewes had cofounded the radical Leader ...

In the 1850s, Mrs. Lewes adopted the pseudonym George Eliot, and several years later, she was a nationwide sensation, beloved even by Queen Victoria. As her wealth and fame burgeoned, ...

For yes, in case you’ve been living under a giant rockery, George Eliot was a “her,” with several roles other than her nom de plume: daughter, sister, friend, wife, stepmother.