George Eliot: Woman of Contradictions

The true story of George Eliot ... What emerges is a woman whose life was more dramatic than anything she permitted her heroines.
- Daily Mail

Ina Taylor's book will send its readers back to the novels, which is what a good biography ought to do.
- The Times

This lively and radical biography explodes the myth that has surrounded George Eliot for over a century. Basing her evidence on extensive new reasearch, Ina Taylor shows us the real George Eliot, a woman of passion, sensuality and fierce intellect, whose personal life shocked society but whose novels won her lasting admiration.

Ina Taylor 1989 George Eliot: Woman of Contradictions London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson ISBN 0-297-81091-X £7.95

Buy this book on

• Acknowledgements
• List of illustrations
• What's new about George Eliot?
• 1 A proud race
• 2 The long sad years of youth, 1819 - 1836
• 3 Neither use nor ornament, 1836 - 1841
• 4 You excommunicate me, 1841 - 1843
• 5 Rosehill and the inhabitants of that paradise, 1842 - 1849
• 6 His inspiration has so quickened my faculties, 1842 - 1849
• 7 Metamorphosis, 1849 - 1850
• 8 The wicked Westminster, 1851
• 9 The man question, 1852 - 1853
• 10 I am a heathen and an outlaw, 1853 - 1854
• 11 An infamous seduction, 1854 - 1855
• 12 A new era of my life, 1855 - 1857
• 13 I certainly care a good deal for the money, 1858 - 1863
• 14 Changing the image, 1863 - 1869
• 15 Honour and homage, 1870 - 1878
• 16 I am now determined to live as bravely as I can, 1878 - 1880
• Epilogue
• Appendices
• Notes and references
• Select bibliograpy
• Index

Visit the The George Eliot Fellowship for a listing of events, lectures etc.

Read Kathleen Adam's essay entitled George Eliot: A Woman in Advance of Her Time: A Short Pen Picture.

Read George Eliot's Middlemarch, Mill on the Floss, and Silas Marner in full online at Bibliomania.