George Eliot: Voice of a Century : A Biography - Hardcover

Karl, Frederick R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393037851 ISBN 13: 9780393037852

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1995

Synopsis

Describes Mary Anne Evans's childhood in nineteenth century Coventry, her lifelong resistance to enforced women's roles, intellectual prowess, elopement with George Henry Lewes, and literary successes.

About this title

Review:

Frederick Karl's magisterial biography of George Eliot proves her to be one of the most fascinating and iconic individuals of her time. Karl, author of commanding biographies of Conrad, Faulkner, and Kafka, meticulously brings Eliot to life. He re-creates her world, London society, and intellectual thought, as well as the world of the gifted or fortunate. He shows how Eliot transformed herself, taking new names as her self developed and grew. With his discussion of Eliot's life, Karl portrays what life was was like for a woman during that time and identifies important women's issues.

Eliot, torn between her desire to conserve the past and her urge to change the limitations imposed by class and gender, proves to be a fascinating individual beckoning towards our twentieth-century sense of the modern. Karl's is an unforgettable portrait of a writer whose profound works are recognized today as literary masterpieces.

From the Back Cover:

'This is a weighty and authoritative biography which takes account of the latest available scholarship...It gives more than adequate representation of the moral and intellectual distinction which George Eliot carried with her everywhere--the distinction of her work, of course, but also the distinctiveness of her thwarted, striated, and passionate nature.' --Peter Ackroyd, 'London Times'

About this edition

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0393037851
• ISBN 13: 9780393037852
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 708