George Eliot

Born Mary Ann Evans in Warwickshire in 1819, George Eliot became one of the most admired English writers of the nineteenth century. She worked as a journalist, editor, and translator before turning to fiction, and she chose a male pen name as she began publishing novels.

Her best-known books include Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss, Silas Marner, Middlemarch, and Daniel Deronda. She was celebrated for combining memorable characters and vivid scenes of provincial life with psychological depth, moral complexity, and a deep interest in how people shape one another's lives.

Eliot died in London in 1880, but her reputation has only grown. Today she is widely regarded as one of the great novelists in English, especially for the intelligence, sympathy, and realism she brought to the form.