EVANS, MARY ANN or MARIAN ("GEORGE ELIOT") (1819-1880).--Novelist, was _b._ near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, _dau._ of Robert E., land agent, a man of strong individuality. Her education was completed at a school in Coventry, and after the death of her mother in 1836, and the marriage of her elder sister, she kept house for her _f._ until his death in 1849. In 1841 they gave up their house in the country, and went to live in Coventry. Here she made the acquaintance of Charles Bray, a writer on phrenology, and his brother-in-law Charles Hennell, a rationalistic writer on the origin of Christianity, whose influence led her to renounce the evangelical views in which she had been brought up. In 1846 she engaged in her first literary work, the completion of a translation begun by Mrs. Hennell of Strauss's _Life of Jesus_. On her _f.'s_ death she went abroad with the Brays, and, on her return in 1850, began to write for the _Westminster Review_, of which from 1851-53 she was assistant-editor. In this capacity she was much thrown into the society of Herbert Spencer and George Henry Lewes (_q.v._), with the latter of whom she in 1854 entered into an irregular connection which lasted until his death. In the same year she translated Feuerbach's _Essence of Christianity_, the only one of her writings to which she attached her real name. It was not until she was nearly 40 that she appears to have discovered the true nature of her genius; for it was not until 1857 that _The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton_ appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_, and announced that a new writer of singular power had arisen. It was followed by _Mr. Gilfil's Love Story_ and _Janet's Repentance_, all three being reprinted as _Scenes from Clerical Life_ (1857); _Adam Bede_ was _pub._ in 1859, _The Mill on the Floss_, in its earlier chapters largely autobiographical, in 1860, _Silas Marner_, perhaps the most artistically constructed of her books, in 1861. In 1860 and 1861 she visited Florence with the view of preparing herself for her next work, _Romola_, a tale of the times of Savonarola, which appeared in 1863 in the _Cornhill Magazine_. _Felix Holt the Radical_ followed in 1866. Miss E. now for a time abandoned novel-writing and took to poetry, and between 1868 and 1871 produced _The Spanish Gipsy_, _Agatha_, _The Legend of Jubal_, and _Armgart_. These poems, though containing much fine work, did not add to her reputation, and in fact in writing them she had departed from her true vocation. Accordingly, she returned to fiction, and in _Middlemarch_, which appeared in parts in 1871-72, she was by many considered to have produced her greatest work. _Daniel Deronda_, which came out in 1874-76, was greatly inferior, and it was her last novel. In 1878 she _pub._ _The Impressions of Theophrastus Such_, a collection of miscellaneous essays. In the same year Mr. Lewes _d._, an event which plunged her into melancholy, which was, however, alleviated by the kindness of Mr.