The Myth of George Eliot

George Eliot is a myth rather than a pseudonym. The writer Marian Evans invented the Victorian novelist as a character with a personality, a political view, and a style that was received enthusiastically by the expanding mid-century readership, and just as enthusiastically rejected by the new generation of writers who considered her the last Victorian novelist. "The Myth of George Eliot" proposes that the narrative style and structure of Evans's fiction is the result of her studies, her reflection on the role of literature in the political and ethical life of a nation, and on the novel as the site of a cooperation between writer and reader in the continuous work on inherited traditions. Neither the last Victorian nor the first Modernists, Evans emerges as an author reflecting on the power of collective narratives in an age of democracy.