The Transferred Life of George Eliot

by Philip Davis

Overview

Reading George Eliot's work was described by one Victorian critic as like the feeling of entering the confessional in which the novelist sees and hears all the secrets of human psychology—'that roar which lies on the other side of silence'. This new biography of George Eliot goes beyond the much-told story of her life. It gives an account of what it means to become a novelist, and to think like a novelist: in particular a realist novelist for whom art exists not for art's sake but in the exploration and service of human life. It shows the formation and the workings of George Eliot's mind as it plays into her creation of some of the greatest novels of the Victorian era.

When at the age of 37 Marian Evans became George Eliot, this change followed long mental preparation and personal suffering. During this time she related her power of intelligence to her capacity for feeling: discovering that her thinking and her art had to combine both. That was the great ambition of her novels—not to be mere pastimes or fictions but experiments in life and helps in living, through the deepest account of human complexity available. Philip Davis's illuminating new biography will enable you both to see through George Eliot's eyes and to feel what it is like to be seen by her, in the imaginative involvement of her readers with her characters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199577378
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/09/2017
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Philip Davis, University of Liverpool

Philip Davis is the author of The Victorians 1830-1880, volume 8 in the Oxford English Literary History Series, and a companion volume on Why Victorian Literature Still Matters. He has written on Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, the literary uses of memory from Wordsworth to Lawrence, and various books on reading. He is general editor of OUP's new paperback series, The Literary Agenda, on the role of literature in the world of the twenty-first century. His previous literary biography was a life of Bernard Malamud. Davis is editor of The Reader magazine, the written voice of the outreach organisation The Reader.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Family Likenesses 1819-18422. The Valley of Humiliation: The Single Woman 1840-513. Three Translations4. The Two Loves of 1852: 1. Herbert Spencer5. The Two Loves of 1852: 2. George Henry Lewes6. 'The first time': Scenes of Clerical Life7. Adam Bede: Crisis and Force Fields8. The Mill on the Floss: 'My problems are purely psychical': Psychology and the Levels of Thought9. 'Great Facts Have Struggled To Find A Voice': the 1860s Middle-Age10. Middlemarch: Realism and Thoughtworld11. Daniel Deronda: the Great Transmitter and the Last Experiment

Editorial Reviews

"Davis comes as close as one could to imagining that mysterious process through which a living historical person becomes a writing voice on a page. Anyone who knows what it means to write for her life will honor his achievement." —Rosemarie Bodenheimer, Victorian Studies

"The strength of Davis's superbly written work of "the great transmitter," as he calls her, lies in the readings of the fiction and discussion of the impact of George Lewes's work on Eliot. ... Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers." —W. Baker, Choice

"The Transferred Life of George Eliot makes its case with impressive force and eloquence. In doing so, it leaves aside many of the standard elements of a biography: an orderly sequence of life-events, financial affairs, contacts with other cultural figures, and so forth. Davis's narrative sticks to Eliot's emotional and intellectual development, as revealed in her fiction and letters. It presents Eliot's life as the heroic overcoming of the multiple oppressions inflicted on a brilliant but awkward and misunderstood provincial girl." —Paul Delany, Los Angeles Review of Books

"There have been several good new biographies of George Eliot in recent years but none quite like this ... Davis has a magisterial command of all her writing." —John Rignall, George Eliot Review: Journal of the George Eliot Fellowship

"A dense and revelatory study." —Rohan Maitzen, Times Literary Supplement

"Thoughtful and searching account of the writer we know as George Eliot, Philip Davis undertakes a project of which his subject would have approved ... acute on the psychology of the novels, both in their content and on their connection to their authors life." —Salley Vickers, The Observer

"Davis's book is a celebration of her "realism", which allows us to see minutely the differences in consciousness of different characters - before we return to our sole selves." —John Mullan, The Guardian

"Anyone who has read and loved Middlemarch will appreciate Davis's devotion to his subject" —Claire Lowdon, Sunday Times

"How many books of erudite, intellectual biography and closely argued literary criticism can ever be described as an enthralling, lucid, page-turning read? ... Philip Davis is the searching, perceptive critic this great novelist deserves." —Patricia Duncker, Literary Review

"I came away from his book more full of admiration and awe for his subject matter than ever before." —On: Yorkshire Magazine

"The Transferred Lives is the most formidably instructive, and certainly complete, life-and-works treatment of George Eliot we have." —Commentary

From the Publisher