The Conversation

Friday essay: George Eliot 200 years on - a scandalous life, a brilliant mind and a huge literary legacy

Author: Camilla Nelson, Associate Professor in Media, University of Notre Dame Australia

A portrait of George Eliot at 30 by Alexandre-Louis-François d'Albert-Durade. Her masterpiece Middlemarch is often claimed to be the greatest novel in the English language.Wikimedia Commons

Mary Ann Evans took the pseudonym “George Eliot” because she wanted to be taken seriously as a writer.

Other female authors – Maria...

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