Presents George Eliot's shorter poetry. This volume includes an introduction, which discusses Eliot's interest in poetry verse and its relation to her prose and prose fiction; her recurring themes and motifs; the poetry's critical reception and its value to modern readers.

Presents George Eliot's shorter poetry. This volume includes an introduction, which discusses Eliot's interest in poetry verse and its relation to her prose and prose fiction; her recurring themes and motifs; the poetry's critical reception and its value to modern readers.

Presents George Eliot's shorter poetry. This volume includes an introduction, which discusses Eliot's interest in poetry verse and its relation to her prose and prose fiction; her recurring themes and motifs; the poetry's critical reception and its value to modern readers.

The position of George Eliot’s poetry within Victorian poetry and within her own canon is crucial for an accurate picture of the writer, as Wendy S. Williams shows in her in-depth examination of Eliot’s poetry and her role as poetess. Williams argues that even more clearly than her fiction, Eliot’s poetry reveals the development of her belief in sympathy as a replacement for orthodox religious views. With knowledge of the Bible and a firm understanding of society’s expectations for female authorship, Eliot consciously participated in a tradition of women poets who relied on feminine piety and poetry to help refine society through compassion and fellow-feeling. Williams examines Eliot’s poetry in relationship to her gender and sexual politics and her shifting religious beliefs, showing that Eliot’s views on gender and religion informed her adoption of the poetess persona. By taking into account Eliot’s poetess treatment of community and motherhood, Williams suggests, readers come to view her not only as a writer of fiction, an intellectual, and a social commentator, but also as a woman who longed to nurture, participate in, and foster human relationships.

This collection brings together new articles by leading scholars who reappraise George Eliot in her bicentenary year as an interdisciplinary thinker and writer for our times. Here, researchers, students, teachers and the general public gain access to new perspectives on Eliot’s vast interests and knowledge, informed by the nineteenth-century British culture in which she lived. Examining Eliot’s wide-ranging engagement with Victorian historical research, periodicals, poetry, mythology, natural history, realism, the body, gender relations, and animal studies, these essays construct an exciting new interdisciplinary agenda for future Eliot studies.

This second edition of The Cambridge Companion to George Eliot includes several new chapters, providing an essential introduction to all aspects of Eliot's life and writing. Accessible essays by some of the most distinguished scholars of Victorian literature provide lucid and original insights into the work of one of the most important writers of the nineteenth century, author most famously of Middlemarch, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and Daniel Deronda. From an introduction that traces her originality as a realist novelist, the book moves on to extensive considerations of each of Eliot's novels, her life and her publishing history. Chapters address the problems of money, philosophy, religion, politics, gender and science, as they are developed in her novels. With its supplementary materials, including a chronology and an extensive section of suggested readings, this Companion is an invaluable tool for scholars and students alike.

The works collected in this volume provide an illuminating introduction to George Eliot's incisive views on religion, art and science, and the nature and purpose of fiction. Essays such as 'Evangelical Teaching' show her rejecting her earlier religious beliefs, while 'Woman in France' questions conventional ideas about female virtues and marriage, and 'Notes on Form in Art' sets out theories of idealism and realism that she developed further in Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda. It also includes selections from Eliot's translations of works by Strauss and Feuerbach that challenged many ideas about Christianity; excerpts from her poems; and reviews of writers such as Wollstonecraft, Goethe and Browning. Wonderfully rich in imagery and observations, these pieces reveal the intellectual development of this most challenging and rewarding of writers.

This collection offers students and scholars of Eliot’s work a timely critical reappraisal of her corpus, including her poetry and non-fiction, reflecting the latest developments in literary criticism. It features innovative analysis ­exploring the relation between Eliot’s Victorian intellectual sensibilities and those of our own era. A comprehensive collection of essays written by leading Eliot scholars Offers a contemporary reappraisals of Eliot’s work reflecting a broad range of current academic interests, including religion, science, ethics, politics, and aesthetics Reflects the very latest developments in literary scholarship Traces the revealing links between Eliot’s Victorian intellectual ­concerns and those of today