But were another childhood-world my share,
I would be born a little sister there.
        (Brother and Sister, 153-154)

1. Brother and Sister
2. I Grant you Ample Leave
3. In a London Drawingroom
4. 'Mid my Gold-brown Curls
5. "O May I Join the Choir Invisible"
6. Sweet Evenings Come and Go, Love

Notes on Life and Works

Mary Ann Evans was born on Nov. 22, 1819, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, to Robert Evans and Christiana Pearson. She was educated at Nuneaton and Coventry (1841-). Her first publication was a poem in the Christian Observer (Jan. 1840). After leaving the Church, she moved to London in 1849 and edited The Westminster from 1851 to 1853. From 1854 to his death in 1878, she lived with George Henry Lewes, editor of the Leader, a married man. Under her pen name, George Eliot, beginning in 1857, she published the novels for which she is famous: Scenes from Clerical Life (1857), Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1863), Felix Holt (1866), Middlemarch (1871-72), and Daniel Deronda (1876). Her two books of verse are The Spanish Gipsy (1868) and The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems (1874). After Lewes' death, she married Johnnie Cross on May 6, 1880. Her death followed quickly, on Dec. 22.

• Eliot, George. Collected Poems. Ed. Lucien Jenkins. London: Skoob Books, 1989. PR 4650 A17 1989 Robarts Library

• --. The George Eliot Letters. Ed. Gordon S. Haight. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1954-78. 7 vols. PR 4681 .A3H3 Trinity College Library

• --. The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems. Toronto: Adam, Stevenson, 1874. B-12/1065 Fisher Rare Book Library

• --. The Spanish Gypsy; the Legend of Jubal and Other Poems, Old and New. New York Worthington, 1890. PR 4666 S6 1890 Robarts Library

• Haight, Gordon Sherman. George Eliot: a Biography. London, Clarendon P., 1968. PR 4681 .H27 Trinity College Library

• Pangallo, Karen L. George Eliot : a Reference Guide, 1972-1987. Boston, MA: G.K. Hall, 1990. Z 8259 P36 1990 Robarts Library

Biographical information

Given name: Mary Ann
Family name: Evans
Birth date: 22 November 1819
Death date: 22 December 1880
Pseudonym: George Eliot
Nationality: English
Family relations
          father: Robert Evans
          mother: Christiana Pearson Evans
          husband: Johnnie Cross (from 6 May 1880 to 22 December 1880)
          husband: George Henry Lewes (from 1854 to 1878)
Literary period: Victorian
Occupations
          Journalist: 1851 to 1853
          novelist: 1857 to 1880
Residences
          Nuneaton, Warwickshire: 1819
          London, England: 1849
First RPO edition: 2001