Silas Marner

Mary Anne (Mary Ann, Marian) Evans (22 November 1819 - 22 December 1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist and one of the leading vvriters of the Victorian era. She is the author of eight novels, including The Mili on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middle-march (1871-72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and well known for their realism and psychological insight. She used a male pen name, she said, to ensure that her vvorks were taken seriously. Female authors were published under their own names, but Eliot vvanted to ensure that she was not seen as merely a writer of romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Levves, with whom she lived for över 20 years.