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Article: George Elliot: Voice of a Century.
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- August 12, 1995
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 Economist Newspaper Ltd. 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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GEORGE ELIOT: VOICE OF A CENTURY. By Frederick Karl. Norton; 768 pages; $30. HarperCollins; Pounds 25
WHEN George Eliot was born in Warwickshire in 1819, Jane Austen's last novel had just been published and Sir Walter Scott, one of Eliot's favourite authors, was in the middle of his prodigiously successful career. Austen's irony and her readiness to poke fun at her characters did not appeal to Eliot; she was drawn to Scott, not by the swashbuckling charms of "Kenilworth" and "Rob Roy", but by his presentation of the hard lives of the poor.
On her 20th birthday, she was revelling in Wordsworth's poems of simple folk and rural life. A Calvinist who renounced ...