I finally got around to George Eliot. Her books have been on my shelves, and so has this biography, picked up long ago at the annual library sale in my hometown. After enjoying Middlemarch, I knew I would read most, if not all, of Eliot’s major works. Since she seemed to draw on people and places from her Midlands childhood, I decided to read this biography in parallel, a chapter at a time, then read the next Eliot novel before continuing.
It was an experiment, and I don’t think I’ll repeat it. I love reading writers’ lives, but I always feel guilty if I haven’t read much of the writer’s output. Yet having this biography lie unfinished on my stack for so long while I successively read Eliot’s novels bothered me. Still, I kept up my regime until it was time to tackle Silas Marner, but then decided to finish this biography instead. Interestingly, Silas Marner is the book that was supposed to be my introduction to George Eliot in high school when I didn’t read most of the required books.
Haight’s biography was an excellent way to become acquainted with George Eliot, the person. She was one of many nineteenth-century English who rejected the idea that a belief in God is necessary for the highest standard of morality.
I was impressed by her work ethic. But she was diffident about her work, plagued by self-doubt and depression (and headaches) while working on each book. Even the slightest adverse reaction could block her. For this reason, her life partner, George Henry Lewes, insulated Eliot from criticism. Authors such as Trollope and Dickens avidly followed the reception of each installment of a new book and fine-tuned subsequent episodes. Haight is undoubtedly correct when he says that, while this practice theoretically could have benefited Eliot as well, the more likely result, given her nature, would have been not even to have the books we have.
One quibble I have with the book: the many names were hard to keep track of; after a while, I skimmed each roster of who was at dinner, concluding she knew nearly everyone worth knowing in her time. Another thing: Even the best authors let a sentence pass that would fit well in The Reader Over Your Shoulder, the Graves and Hodges classic. Haight is no exception: Lewes was researching for a book on psychology. In Vienna, an acquaintance introduced him to “Professor Meynert, Director of the Psychiatric Clinic, and Stricker, the pathologist, who exhibited interesting types of insanity.” ( )

1361 George Eliot: A Biography, by Gordon S. Haight (read 15 Oct 1975) The author is (or was in 1975, at least) a Yale professor, and this is an excellent biography, which I enjoyed uninterruptedly. It lacks nothing as a biography, and I cannot see how a better one of George Eliot could be written. Marian Evans was born Nov 22, 1819. She took up living with George Henry Lewis in 1854, and lived with him till he died Nov. 30, 1878. On May 6, 1880, she married John Walter Cross. They took off for the Continent and on July 8,1880, he jumped into the Grand Canal in Venice in a fit of mental depression, and they came home. She died 22 Dec 1880. Though there is much in her life I disapprove of, she was an interesting and important person--and this book was a joy to read. ( )

Classic bio, still the best around. scholarly requisite ( )