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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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George Eliot
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(pen name of Mary Ann Evans, 1819–1880) Writer whose first novel, *Adam Bede (1858), revealed the blend of detailed realism and moral passion which became her hallmark and caused her to be recognized immediately as a major literary figure. Her later books include *Mill on the Floss (1860), the short Silas Marner (1861), Felix Holt (1866), and her masterpiece, *Middlemarch (1871–2). Her personal life was bravely unconventional, for she made public her atheism and lived openly with a married man, George Henry Lewes (1817–78), who was unable by the laws of those days to divorce his wife. It was he who first encouraged her to write fiction. After his death, and in the last year of her own life, she married a young banker, John Walter Cross, who had looked after her investments.
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