George Eliot
George Eliot, pen-name of Mary Ann Evans (1819-80), British novelist. After her mother’s death in 1836, she kept house for her father until he died. In 1849 she moved to London and became an editor on the West-minster Review. She lived with the journalist George Henry Lewes, who was separated from his wife, from 1854 until his death in 1878. He encouraged her to write fiction, and she made her name with Adam Bede (1859). The Mill on the Floss (1860) followed, and Middle-march (1871) was her greatest success. All three novels were set in her native Warwickshire. In 1880 she married an old friend, John Walter Cross, but died later that year.
