This collection gathers George Eliot's essays from periodicals such as The Westminster Review. They discuss literature, religion, society, women in French culture, German life and fiction, and moral themes, offering a window into Victorian thought. Worth listening for their clear, thoughtful prose and the light they shed on her fiction.
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Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
Transcribed from the 1883 Funk & Wagnalls edition by David Price, email [email protected] THE ESSAYS of “GEORGE ELIOT.” COMPLETE. COLLECTED AND ARRANGED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION ON HER “ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES,” by NATHAN SHEPPARD, editor of “character readings from george eliot,” and “the dickens reader;” and author of “shut up in paris.” new york: FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 10 and 12 Dey Street. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by FUNK & WAGNALLS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. CONTENTS.
Preface, 5 “George Eliot’s” Analysis of Motives, 7 I.—Carlyle’s Life of Sterling, 25 II.—Woman in France, 31 III.—Evangelical Teaching, 64 IV.—German Wit, 99 V.—Natural History of German Life, 141 VI.—Silly Novels by Lady Novelists, 178 VII.—Worldliness and Other-Worldliness, 205 VIII.—The Influence of Rationalism, 257 IX.—The Grammar of Ornament, 272 X.—Felix Holt’s Address to Workingmen, 275 PREFACE. Since the death of George Eliot much public curiosity has been excited by the repeated allusions to, and quotations from, her contributions to periodical literature, and a leading newspaper gives expression to a general wish when it says that “this series of striking essays ought to be collected and reprinted, both because of substantive worth and because of the light they throw on the author’s literary canons and predilections.” In fact, the articles which were published anonymously in The Westminster Review have been so pointedly designated by the editor, and the biographical sketch in the “Famous Women” series is so emphatic in its praise of them, and so copious in its extracts from one and the least important one of them, that the publication of all the Review and magazine articles of the renowned novelist, without abridgment or alteration, would seem but an act of fair play to her fame, while at the same time a compliance with a
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