George Eliot

George Eliot [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons George Eliot is the pseudonym created in 1857 by the aspiring writer Marian Evans. In a letter to her publisher William Blackwood, Evans suggested that the name George Eliot should be assigned to her work in place of her own. The male name was created partly to conceal the gender of the author, and partly to disguise her irregular social position, living as an unmarried woman with a married man. Eliot assured Blackwood - who was at that time unaware of her true identity - that the pen name was necessary to employ 'as a tub to throw to the whale in case of curious enquiries'. The name George Eliot was used to publish all of her fictional work and ensured that Eliot's novels were taken seriously. Unlike Charlotte Brontë's pen name Currer Bell, which has fallen into disuse, the name George Eliot is still employed today to identify one of the most influential novelists of the Victorian era. Born Mary Anne Evans on 22nd November 1819 to the second wife of Robert Evans, estate manager for the Newdigate family of Arbury Hall in Warwickshire, Mary Anne spent much of her young life in this rural...