George Eliot



George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Ann, or Marian, Evans (1819–1880), an English novelist. She was roughly contemporary with Charles Dickens, but started writing later than he did. Her first fiction, an installment of a story later collected in Scenes of Clerical Life, was published in 1857, and her first novel, Adam Bede, in 1859. Her best-known novels are Silas Marner and Middlemarch, the latter usually being considered her masterpiece.

She wrote chiefly about rural, provincial middle-class life — the subtitle of Middlemarch is "A Study of Provincial Life" — and was a shrewd observer of people's thoughts and motivations, with a dry sense of humour.

Her novels are:
 * Adam Bede (1859)
 * The Mill on the Floss (1860)
 * Silas Marner (1861)
 * Romola (1863)
 * Felix Holt (1866)
 * Middlemarch (1871–72)
 * Daniel Deronda (1876)

Her other fiction includes:
 * Scenes of Clerical Life (1858), a collection of three stories.

She also wrote poetry, and (despite having rejected her faith) translated religious works including Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity from the German. Perhaps of even more importance to tropers, she wrote Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, perhaps the first ever listing of Mary Sue Tropes.


 * Silas Marner
 * Daniel Deronda
 * Middlemarch
 * Romola
 * Silly Novels by Lady Novelists


 * Downer Ending: The Mill on the Floss.
 * Moustache De Plume: Eliot is one of the best-known examples.