Biography of George Eliot

For other people of the same name, see George Elliot (disambiguation).

"Mary Ann Evans" redirects here. For the wife of Benjamin Disraeli, see Mary Anne Disraeli.

George Eliot
Aged 30 by the Swiss artist Alexandre Louis François d'Albert Durade (1804–86)
Born	Mary Anne Evans 22 November 1819 South Farm, Arbury Hall, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England
Died	22 December 1880 (aged 61) 4 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, England
Resting place	Highgate Cemetery (East), Highgate, London
Pen name	George Eliot
Occupation	Novelist
Period	Victorian
Notable work(s)	The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), Daniel Deronda (1876)
Spouse(s)	John Cross (1880; her death)
Partner(s)	George Henry Lewes (1854–78) (his death)
Relative(s)	Robert Evans and Christiana Pearson (parents); Christiana, Isaac, Robert, and Fanny (siblings)

Mary Anne (alternatively Mary Ann or Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist, and translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda(1876), most of them set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.

She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure her works would be taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot's life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing lighthearted romances. An additional factor in her use of a pen name may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived for over 20 years.^[1]

Her 1872 work, Middlemarch, has been described as the greatest novel in the English language by Martin Amis^[2] and by Julian Barnes.^[3]