Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76408-7 - George Eliot in Context Edited by Margaret Harris Frontmatter More information GEORGE ELIOT IN CONTEXT Prodigiously learned, alive to the massive social changes of her time, defi ant of many Victorian orthodoxies, George Eliot has always chal- lenged her readers. She is at once chronicler and analyst, novelist of nostalgia and monumental thinker. In her great novel Middlemarch she writes of ‘that tempting range of relevancies called the universe’. Th is volume identifi es a range of ‘relevancies’ that inform both her fi ctional and her non-fi ctional writings. Th e range and scale of her achievement are brought into focus by cogent essays on the many contexts – historical, intellectual, political, social, cultural – to her work. In addition there are discussions of her critical history and leg- acy, as well as of the material conditions of production and distri- bution of her novels and her journalism. Th e volume enables fuller understanding and appreciation, from a twenty-fi rst-century stand- point, of the life and work of one of the nineteenth century’s major writers. margaret harris is Professor of English Literature and Director of Research Development in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney. She has published widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century English and Australian literature. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76408-7 - George Eliot in Context Edited by Margaret Harris Frontmatter More information © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76408-7 - George Eliot in Context Edited by Margaret Harris Frontmatter More information GEORGE ELIOT IN CONTEXT edited by MARGARET HARRIS © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76408-7 - George Eliot in Context Edited by Margaret Harris Frontmatter More information cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, S ã o Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press Th e Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb 2 8 ru , UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521764087 © Cambridge University Press 2013 Th is publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2013 Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by the MPG Books Group A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data George Eliot in context / edited by Margaret Harris. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-521-76408-7 (hardback) 1. Eliot, George, 1819–1880–Criticism and interpretation. I. Harris, Margaret, 1942– editor of compilation. pr 4688. g 396 2013 823′.8–dc23 2012048496 isbn 978-0-521-76408-7 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of url s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76408-7 - George Eliot in Context Edited by Margaret Harris Frontmatter More information Contents List of illustrations page viii Notes on contributors xii Preface xvii Chronology xix Margaret Harris List of texts and abbreviations xxxi part i life and afterlife 1 1 George Eliot’s life 3 Kathryn Hughes 2 Publishers and publication 12 Joanne Shattock 3 Editions of George Eliot’s work 23 Joanne Shattock 4 G e n r e 3 4 Nancy Henry 5 Th e biographical tradition 41 Margaret Harris 6 Afterlife 52 Margaret Harris part ii critical fortunes 63 7 Critical responses: to 1900 65 Juliette Atkinson v © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76408-7 - George Eliot in Context Edited by Margaret Harris Frontmatter More information vi Contents 8 Critical responses: 1900–1970 74 Juliette Atkinson 9 Critical responses: 1970–present 83 Juliette Atkinson part iii cultural and social contexts 93 10 Class 95 Ruth Livesey 11 Dress 104 Clair Hughes 12 Education 113 Elizabeth Gargano 13 Etiquette 122 Judith Flanders 14 Families and kinship 129 Josie Billington 15 Gender and the Woman Question 137 Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi 16 Historiography 145 Joanne Wilkes 17 Industry and technology 153 Richard Menke 18 Interiors 160 Judith Flanders 19 Landscape 168 John Rignall 20 Language 176 Melissa Raines 21 Law 183 Kieran Dolin 22 Metropolitanism 190 John Rignall © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76408-7 - George Eliot in Context Edited by Margaret Harris Frontmatter More information Contents vii 23 Money 197 Dermot Coleman 24 Music 206 Delia da Sousa Correa 25 Philosophy 214 Moira Gatens 26 Politics 222 Robert Dingley 27 Race 230 Alicia Carroll 28 Religion 238 Oliver Lovesey 29 Romanticism 248 Joanne Wilkes 30 Rural life 256 Carol A. Martin 3 1 Th e science of the mind 264 Pauline Nestor 32 Secularism 271 Michael Rectenwald 3 3 Th eatre 279 Lynn Voskuil 34 Transport 287 Ruth Livesey 35 Travel and tourism 295 Judith Johnston 36 Visual arts 303 Leon é e Ormond Further reading 312 Index 327 © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76408-7 - George Eliot in Context Edited by Margaret Harris Frontmatter More information Illustrations 1 An 1858 photograph by John Edwin Mayall, of which George Eliot’s friend Mme Belloc (Bessie Rayner Parkes) commented that it gave ‘the only real indication left to us of the true shape of the head, and of George Eliot’s smile and general bearing’. © National Portrait Gallery, London. page 7 2 Engraving by Paul Rajon of Frederic Burton’s 1864 portrait of George Eliot, commissioned by J. W. Cross as the frontispiece for George Eliot’s Life (1885). 9 3 Th e fi rst (anonymous) publication of Scenes of Clerical Life , in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine , January 1857. 16 4 George Eliot’s revisions of the opening of chapter 17 of Adam Bede for the eighth edition. By permission of Harry Ransom Center, Th e University of Texas at Austin. 26 5 John Walter Cross (1840–1924), George Eliot’s husband and biographer, is seated on the right. © National Portrait Gallery, London. 44 6 Gordon S. Haight (1901–85), Professor of English at Yale from 1933, photographed in 1938. His work on George Eliot, especially his edition of her letters in nine volumes (1954–78), is indispensable. Reproduced by permission of Manuscripts & Archives, Yale University Library. Offi ce of Public Aff airs, Yale University. Photographs of Individuals (RU686). 48 7 Still from the set in Florence for Romola , directed by Henry King (1924), with (left to right) Dorothy Gish (Tessa), Ronald Colman (Carlo Bucellini), Henry King, unknown, Lillian Gish (Romola). Courtesy of www.doctormacro.com. 57 8 Th e iconoclastic critic F. R. Leavis (1895–1978; charcoal drawing by Robert Sargent Austin, 1934) included George Eliot in his infl uential Th e Great Tradition (1948). © National Portrait Gallery, London. 77 viii © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76408-7 - George Eliot in Context Edited by Margaret Harris Frontmatter More information List of illustrations ix 9 Barbara Hardy (born 1924; photograph by Bassano, 1974): a key fi gure in the post-World War II critical rehabilitation of George Eliot. © National Portrait Gallery, London. 80 1 0 Th e Fair Toxophilites depicts one of the archery contests fashionable in the second half of the nineteenth century, at which young elite women like Gwendolen Harleth were able to display their persons and their dress to best advantage. Dress and headgear could be elaborate as archery was an essentially static aff air. Th e Fair Toxophilites , 1872, by William Powell Frith (1819–1909). Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, Devon, UK/Th e Bridgeman Art Library. Nationality/copyright status: English/out of copyright. 110 11 As chief architect for the School Board of London, E. R. Robson was responsible for the design of hundreds of schools in London after the Elementary Education Act of 1870. ‘Double Class-Room, shewing dual arrangement of desks’ is from his School Architecture; Being Practical Remarks on the Planning, Designing, Building and Furnishing of School-Houses (1874), which encapsulated the principles he espoused. 114 1 2 ‘ Th e Priory – Drawing-Room’, engraving from George Eliot’s Life by J. W. Cross. Th e room was decorated by the fashionable designer Owen Jones when George Eliot and George Lewes bought the house in 1863. 162 13 Vignette by Myles Birket Foster for the title page of Blackwood’s 1874 one-volume edition of Middlemarch. 172 14 ‘Sketches in the Bank of England: Machine for weighing gold’ (Illustrated London News , 1873). © Trustees of the British Museum. 198 15 George Eliot heard the baritone George Henschel (1850–1934) on a number of occasions, sometimes accompanying himself as in this portrait. Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Portrait of the singer George Henschel playing Alma-Tadema’s piano, Townshend House 1879 (oil on panel). Private collection. Photo © Christie’s Images. Reproduced by permission of Th e Bridgeman Art Library. 209 16 John Tenniel, ‘A leap in the dark’, Punch (3 August 1867). Masquerading as a thoroughbred, Disraeli (who piloted the 1867 Bill through the Commons) gallops at a forbidding hedge labelled © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-76408-7 - George Eliot in Context Edited by Margaret Harris Frontmatter More information x List of illustrations REFORM, while Britannia, terrifi ed, shields her face.