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George Eliot 200th anniversary timeline

George Eliot (born Mary Anne Evans) was born 22 November 1819, 2019 marks the 200th anniversary of her birth. Eliot is considered one of the most important and influential writers in the history of English literature and her novels are often praised as being the prototypes for the modern novel, full of rich detail of English country life and complete with characters whose motivations are laid bare by the author’s probing psychological dissections. Her masterpiece Middlemarch represents the culmination of Eliot’s recurring theme: the intelligent girl swept away by life’s endless parade of tempting adventures only to be pulled back by Victorian convention and stymied by society’s expectations of her gender.

We’ve created a timeline to showcase Eliot’s life, ranging from her upbringing, the beginning of her writing career using a pseudonym and becoming George Eliot, to her personal life and marriages.

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