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George Eliot was born Mary Anne Evans in 1819. Her father was the land agent of Arbury Hall in Warwickshire, in the library of which Eliot embarked upon a brilliant self-education. She moved to London in 1850 and shone in its literary circles. It was, however, her novels of English rural life that brought her fame, starting with Adam Bede, published under her new pen-name in 1859. She went on to publish novels including The Mill on the Floss in 1860 and Middlemarch in 1871 as well as poetry and non-fiction. Queen Victoria was one of her most devoted readers. Eliot died in 1880.
[Maggie’s] one of those great literary heroines whom bookish girls grow up wanting to be. Just like Anne of Green Gables or even Jane Eyre, Maggie captures exactly the dilemma of being the clever girl of the family * Guardian * As one comes back to [Eliot’s] books after years of absence they pour out, even against our expectations, the same store of energy and heat, so that we want more than anything to idle in the warmth -- Virginia Woolf
