Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). Like Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside.
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century".
Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by English author George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Ann Evans. It appeared in eight installments (volumes) in 1871 and 1872. Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midlands town, in 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Despite comic elements, Middlemarch uses realism to encompass historical events: the 1832 Reform Act, early railways, and the accession of King William IV. It looks at medicine of the time and reactionary views in a settled community facing unwelcome change. Eliot began writing the two pieces that formed the novel in 1869–1870 and completed it in 1871. Initial reviews were mixed, but it is now seen widely as her best work and one of the great English novels.
The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. It is a Bildungsroman and a picaresque novel. It was first published on 28 February 1749 in London and is among the earliest English works to be classified as a novel. It is the earliest novel mentioned by W. Somerset Maugham in his 1948 book Great Novelists and Their Novels among the ten best novels of the world.
John Blackwood FRSE (1818-1879) was a Scottish editor and publisher, sixth son of William Blackwood, founder of the publishing company William Blackwood & Sons. In 1845, John Blackwood became manager and editor of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine after the death of his oldest brother, Alexander, later becoming head of the firm at the death of his brother Robert. Blackwood died in 1879, having managed the company for thirty-four years, the longest of all the Blackwood editors.
The Mill on the Floss is a novel by English author George Eliot, first published in three volumes on 4 April 1860 by William Blackwood and Sons. The first American edition was published by Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York.
Margaret Oliphant Wilson Oliphant was a Scottish novelist and historical writer, who usually wrote as Mrs. Oliphant. Her fictional works cover "domestic realism, the historical novel and tales of the supernatural".
Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe is the third novel by English author George Eliot. It was published in 1861. An outwardly simple tale of a linen weaver, the novel is notable for its strong realism and its sophisticated treatment of a variety of issues ranging from religion to industrialisation to community.
Countess Natalya "Natasha" Ilyinichna Rostova is a central fictional character in Leo Tolstoy's 1869 novel War and Peace. She is the beautiful daughter of Ilya Rostov, a loving, kind, and generous nobleman. Natasha is based on both Tanya Behrs, Tolstoy's sister-in-law, and Sophia Tolstaya, Tolstoy's wife.
Ellastone is a village in the East Staffordshire borough of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands of England. It is on the Staffordshire side of the River Dove and is directly opposite the village of Norbury in Derbyshire. It is between Uttoxeter and Ashbourne.
Romola (1862–63) is a historical novel written by English author Mary Ann Evans under the pen name of George Eliot set in the fifteenth century. It is "a deep study of life in the city of Florence from an intellectual, artistic, religious, and social point of view". The story takes place amidst actual historical events during the Italian Renaissance, and includes in its plot several notable figures from Florentine history.
Hetty or Hettie is a female first name, often a diminutive form (hypocorism) of Henrietta.
Dinah Morris is a major character in George Eliot's novel Adam Bede (1859); a Methodist lay preacher, she was modelled on Eliot's aunt Elizabeth Evans.
Hetty Sorrel is a major character in George Eliot's novel Adam Bede (1859).
Scenes of Clerical Life is George Eliot's first published work of fiction, a collection of three short stories, published in book form; it was the first of her works to be released under her famous pseudonym. The stories were first published in Blackwood's Magazine over the course of the year 1857, initially anonymously, before being released as a two-volume set by Blackwood and Sons in January 1858. The three stories are set during the last twenty years of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century over a fifty-year period. The stories take place in and around the fictional town of Milby in the English Midlands. Each of the Scenes concerns a different Anglican clergyman, but is not necessarily centred upon him. Eliot examines, among other things, the effects of religious reform and the tension between the Established and the Dissenting Churches on the clergymen and their congregations, and draws attention to various social issues, such as poverty, alcoholism and domestic violence.
Sorrel, Rumex acetosa, is a perennial herb cultivated as a leaf vegetable.
Adam Bede is a 1918 British silent drama film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Bransby Williams, Ivy Close and Malvina Longfellow. It is an adaptation of the 1859 novel Adam Bede by George Eliot.
Richard Stang was an American literary critic, author, scholar, and professor whose groundbreaking insights on the nineteenth-century English novel have shaped the attitudes of subsequent writers and critics for more than six decades. He was the first critic to recognize and document the sophistication of contemporary mid-Victorian criticism of the novel, and to show that it in effect amounted to a holistic aesthetics of fiction for the English novel in the mid-century.
Anne Mozley was a British author and critic. She lived in Derby and the small village of Barrow-upon-Trent, which is south of the city. She has been described as an almost anonymous author, as few of her works were attributed to her on first publication. She is credited with the first review of George Eliot's book, Adam Bede, that recognized that it had to be written by a woman.
William Blackwood and Sons was a Scottish publishing house and printer founded by William Blackwood in 1804. It played a key role in literary history, publishing many important authors, for example John Buchan, George Tomkyns Chesney, Joseph Conrad, George Eliot, E. M. Forster, John Galt, John Neal, Thomas De Quincey, Charles Reade, Margaret Oliphant, John Hanning Speke and Anthony Trollope, both in books and in the monthly Blackwood’s Magazine.
