Browse Documents (208 total)
- Tags: review
Sort by:
Review of George Eliot and Music by Beryl Gray
It was, perhaps, a happy portent that the future George Eliot should have been born on St. Cecilia's Day, 1819, for music was her chief delight. Doubtless they were her own sentiments that Maggie Tulliver was expressing when she said in "The Mill on…
Tags: alice lynes, beryl gray, review
Review of "Scenes from an Improper Life" by Stella Martin
Leamington’s Loft Theatre have taken a risk with their Golden Jubilee production. Rather than settling for an established showpiece, they have chosen to give us a world premiere – a play about the life of the novelist George Eliot. Risks are…
Tags: david isaacs, review, stella martin
Review of 'The Story of Gwendolen Harleth' - Radio Adaptation Controversy
Another good bit of honest work was ‘The Story of Gwendolen Harleth’ abridged from ‘Daniel Deronda’, produced by Virginia Browne-Wilkinson originally for Woman’s Hour, and just concluded in the Book at Bedtime slot. I don’t usually listen…
Tags: marghanita laski, review
Review of George Eliot and her World by Marghanita Laski and George Eliot by T.S. Pearce
There have been a crop of biographies of one sort or another since George Eliot’s death ninety-three years ago, but this is the first one to be fully illustrated. The 123 illustrations are not all totally relevant but this is a small arrow to be…
Tags: kathleen adams, marghanita laski, review, t.s. pearce
Review of Gabriel Woolf's Reading: By George, It's Worth Going
I totally accept the truism that it's better to travel hopefully than to arrive. And it is only my incurable optimism which allows me to set out on so many theatrical journeys with new enthusiasm when my hopes have so often been dashed the night…
Tags: david isaacs, gabriel woolf, review
Review of A Foretaste of Proust: A Study of Proust and his Precursors by Dr. Margaret Mein
As the title indicates, this book is intended primarily for Proust specialists. Dr. Mein undertakes comparative studies of Proust and nine writers - Pascal, Chateaubriand, Nerval, Baudelaire, Novalis, Balzac, George Eliot, Fromentin and Flaubert. The…
Tags: anthony mccobb, margaret mein, review
Review of Reader: I Married Him by Patricia Beer
Inevitably I turned to the section of the book that deals with George Eliot with greater interest than I bestowed on the rest of it, but I dutifully then read each chapter. I was glad that I did for I gained knowledge from the content and pleasure…
Tags: kathleen adams, patricia beer, review
Review of G. H. Lewes's Seaside Studies, "Brief Encounter"
I seemed to meet George Henry Lewes, ‘husband’ of George Eliot in the pages of his book, Seaside Studies. He emerged through the leaves, his bewhiskered face in shadow, on his head a broad-brimmed hat, his body bulky and shapeless in an old coat…
Tags: george henry lewes, kathleen porter, review
Review of George Eliot and the Visual Arts by Hugh Witemeyer
George Eliot and the Visual Arts is probably intended primarily for the student and specialist. However, the general reader who, in the words of Mr. Brooke in Middlemarch, does not mind ‘straining to keep up with’ the author, will find…
Tags: hugh witemeyer, kathleen porter, review
Review of The George Eliot Letters. Volumes 8 and 9 edited by Gordon S. Haight
It goes without saying that anyone with a dedicated interest in George Eliot would regard the first seven volumes of the George Eliot Letters as an essential part of their reading, and that the serious collector will feel obliged to add Volumes 8…
Tags: gordon haight, kathleen adams, review
Review of George Eliot: Romantic Humanist by K.M. Newton, Fictions of Resolution in Three Victorian Novels by David Deirdre and The Victorian Multiplot Novel by Peter K. Garrett
GEORGE ELIOT: ROMANTIC HUMANIST breaks much new ground and makes compelling if somewhat esoteric reading. He rightly notes George Eliot's scepticism with regard to the truth of philosophical systems and traces the relationship between Lewes's…
Book Reviews of A George Eliot Companion by F.B. Pinion; A George Eliot Miscellany by F.B. Pinion; The Victorian Historical Novel by Andrew Sanders; Romola edited by Andrew Sanders; The Leavises on Fiction; A Historic Partnership by P.J.M. Robertson; and George Eliot: A Centenary Tribute edited by Gordon Haight and Rosemary van Arsdel
I suppose there is a tendency to regard F.B. Pinion as the 'Companion' man after the services he has rendered Jane Austen, the Bronte's, D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy, and their readers, by providing summaries, evaluations, indentifications,…
Review of Female Friendships and Communities: Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Gaskell by Pauline Nestor
Pauline Nestor's book traces the prominence, the emergence of women writers by the mid-nineteenth century, and the making of a community available to themselves. As she puts it, they were banding together, for 'women were no longer merely victims of…
Tags: graham handley, pauline nestor, review
Review of George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Science: The Make-Believe of a Beginning by Sally Shuttleworth
This is a sustained investigation of the novels (Scenes of Clerical Life is virtually omitted) and the scientific climate and knowledge which inform them. It is a necessary and stimulating book, firmly anchored in 19th century scientific: theory. It…
Tags: graham handley, review, sally shuttleworth
Review of George Eliot by Jennifer Uglow
When I first heard that Virago were to publish a book about George Eliot (the author sought my help in locating certain photographs) I was a little apprehensive. I feared that this might be a militant feminist view of a lady who concerned herself…
Tags: jennifer uglow, kathleen adams, review
Review of Tea and Sprouts: The 1987 George Eliot Readings by Gabriel Woolf
Does the Englishman eat and drink only to stay alive? Using evidence provided by George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Jerome K. Jerome, Lewis Carroll and the poetic ponderings of mighty and minor poets, Gabriel Woolf took a…
Tags: gabriel woolf, jonathan ouvry, review
Review of World's Classics Series: Felix Holt ed. by Fred C. Thomson
If one cannot afford the splendid Clarendon Editions of George Eiot's novels. the World's Classics editions are a very good second best. They are second -best, however, only in their format, since the text of the novels is the same. For the finer…
Tags: felix holt, fred c. thomson, kathleen adams, review
Review of Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy by Deirdre David
This is a very well documented and impressive study of Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot. It is more than that: it is directly inspirational, stimulating one to re-read and re-assess in the light of Miss David's analyses.…
Tags: deirdre david, graham handley, review
Review of The Prison of Womanhood. Four Provicial Heroines in Nineteenth Century Fiction by Elizabeth Jane Sabiston
This is an interesting but relatively obvious analysis of four female characters of major significance in 19th century fiction. Miss Sabiston is seeking to establish whether or not there is a 'feminine creative sensibility'. She notes the heroines'…
Tags: graham handley, review
Review: The Sympathetic Response: George Eliot's Fictional Rhetoric by Mary Ellen Doyle
In her Acknowledgements the author refers to 'a postal loss of the whole manuscript' and this should, I suppose set up a sympathetic response in her readers. But all such traumas spent, this is a book written in the grip of a critical obsession. We…
Tags: graham handley, mary ellen doyle, review
Review: Mr. George Eliot by David William
In his Preliminary David Williams writes that 'Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is a very stripped down lady compared to Karen who operates her check-out till at the super-market and is swept by inner turmoil many times a day’. It is an unfortunate and…
Tags: david william, graham handley, review
Review: Particularities: Readings in George Eliot by Barbara Hardy
Barbara Hardy's pre-eminence as a George Eliot scholar is already well-established, and in this collection of ten essays and lectures, the first dating back to 1964, she continues her close analysis of the subtleties and nuances which mark George…
Tags: barbara hardy, kathleen porter, review
Review of George Eliot by Rosemary Ashton
This is an admirable introduction to the works of George Eliot, succinctly written, with a fine summary of the influences which shaped the great novelist in her early years and in the formative period of her life as translator and journalist. Small…
Tags: graham handley, review, rosemary ashton
Review of Johnnie Cross by Terence de Vere White
Sooner or later someone was bound to cash in on John Walter Cross's attempted suicide in Venice while on his 'wedding journey' with George Eliot. She who must be obeyed is capitalised throughout this joke - it is an appropriately sick joke for our…
Review of Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth Century Fiction by Gillian Beer
Reviewers of important books in the Nineteenth Century could often reckon on some 30 or 40 pages in which to cover their subject, to analyse, evaluate, compare and even indulge their own ideas in the course of their article. Nowadays we have to make…
Tags: gillian beer, graham handley, review
Featured Item
Idlers and Collaborators: Enter the Dog
Both George Eliot and her older contemporary, Charles Dickens, introduced dogs into their fiction before introducing any into their homes. By the time…