Memory And History In George Eliot

This book explores the interrelations between communal memory and the sense of history in George Eliot's novels by focusing on issues such as memory and narrative, memory and oblivion, memory and time, and the interactions between personal, communal and national memories. Hao Li offers a fresh critical reading informed by major nineteenth-century theories and argues for a reappraisal of George Eliot's complex understanding of the dialects of memory and history, an understanding that both integrates and transcends the positivist and the romantic-historical approaches of her time.

The Autobiography is the personal journal of an independent Victorian woman who describes her day-to-day activities as a businesswoman, social reformer, scholar, and journalist; makes many insightful observations on gender issues; and provides intriguing details of her relationships with many of the leading political and literary figures of her day, particularly the novelist George Eliot, whom she admired as a writer and as a person During the journal years, 1876-1900, Simcox made many significant contributions toward improving people's lives, but she was always particularly concerned with women's issues. With her friend Mary Hamilton, she established a shirtmaking cooperative to provide employment for women, kept the accounts, and managed the enterprise. She helped establish trade unions and promote women's suffrage, served as a delegate to the Trade Union Congress, and worked closely with Emma Paterson, Annie Besant, Harriet Law, Charles Bradlaugh, and William Morris. Simcox was also the author of three books and a regular contributor to leading periodicals The Autobiography reveals Simcox's childhood, her attitudes toward men and marriage, and her relationships with her mother and her two older brothers, both noted writers. The journal provides unique insights into the mind of a remarkable 19th-century woman who worked in and left her mark on a man's world. Her book is a fascinating source of facts, observations, and opinions for scholars and readers interested in Eliot, Victorian literature, and society, gender and women's issues.

From 1854 to 1855, George Eliot spent eight months in Germany, a period that marked the start of her life with George Lewes. Though Eliot documented this journey more extensively than any other, it has remained an under-researched part of Eliot's biography. In her meticulously documented and engaging book, Gerlinde Röder-Bolton draws on Eliot's own writings, as well as on extensive original research in German archives and libraries, to provide the most thorough account yet published of the couple's visit. Rich in historical, social, and cultural detail, George Eliot in Germany, 1854-55 not only records the couple's travels but supplies a context for their encounters with people and places. In the process, Röder-Bolton shows how the crossing of geographical boundaries may be read as symbolic of Eliot's transition from single woman to social outcast and from translator and critic to writer of fiction.

In his study of Eliot as a psychological novelist, Michael Davis examines Eliot's writings in the context of a large volume of nineteenth-century scientific writing about the mind. Eliot, Davis argues, manipulated scientific language in often subversive ways to propose a vision of mind as both fundamentally connected to the external world and radically isolated from and independent of that world. In showing the alignments between Eliot's work and the formulations of such key thinkers as Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, and G. H. Lewes, Davis reveals how Eliot responds both creatively and critically to contemporary theories of mind, as she explores such fundamental issues as the mind/body relationship, the mind in evolutionary theory, the significance of reason and emotion, and consciousness. Davis also points to important parallels between Eliot's work and new and future developments in psychology, particularly in the work of William James. In Middlemarch, for example, Eliot demonstrates more clearly than either Lewes or James the way the conscious self is shaped by language. Davis concludes by showing that the complexity of mind, which Eliot expresses through her imaginative use of scientific language, takes on a potentially theological significance. His book suggests a new trajectory for scholars exploring George Eliot's representations of the self in the context of science, society, and religious faith.

This book examines George Eliot's understanding of money and economics within the context of the ethics of economics in nineteenth-century England.

This volume guides students through Eliot's most widely studied novels: The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner and Middlemarch. The first part of the book is based on analysis of extracts grouped by themes including relationships, society and morality. At the end of each chapter, a 'Methods' section offers ideas for independent study. The second part describes Eliot's biographical, cultural and intellectual environment, and gives readings of representative critical writing.

This volume explores the cultural importance of concepts and theories of memory. Ranging historically from the French Revolution to the beginnings of Modernism, it examines the importance of memory in cultural history.

This second edition, including some new chapters, provides an essential introduction to all aspects of George Eliot's life and writing. Accessible essays by some of the most distinguished scholars of Victorian literature provide lucid and often original insights into the work of one of the most important novelists of the nineteenth century.