George Eliot

George Eliot, the pen name of Mary Anne Evans, was one of the leading novelists of the Victorian era. She adopted the male cover to ensure that her novels would be taken seriously, but also possibly to shield her somewhat unconventional private life from scrutiny. In 1854, she and philosopher George Henry Lewes, a married man, set up house together. Her novels, noted for their realism, social awareness, sophisticated character sketches, and psychological insight, include The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876).