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Article: Melodramatic transformation: George Eliot and the refashioning of Mansfield Park.(Miscellany)
- Article from:
- Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal
- Article date:
- January 1, 2003
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 Jane Austen Society of North America. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE NIGHT BEFORE SHE EMBARKED On writing the central narrative of one of her earliest short stories, George Eliot recorded in her journal that she had just finished reading Austen's Mansfield Park (Noble 137). Since Christmas Day of 1856, Eliot had been working on "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story," the second of her experiments in fiction-writing after the success in Blackwood's Magazine of her first short story, "Amos Barton." Eliot had begun "Amos Barton" in September of that year, under the magisterial eye of her lover (and eminent literary critic), George Henry Lewes. Lewes had shepherded Eliot's first story to John Blackwood, editor of Blackwood's Magazine, in ...