Her first attempt at fiction was made when in her thirty-seventh year, in September 1856. The account of this is best shown in her own words here given among the extracts from her writings. Her first story was a short one, called 'The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton.' This was followed by 'Mr. Gilfil's Love Story' and 'Janet's Repentance,' and soon there was that remarkable volume called 'Scenes of Clerical Life.' Lewes and she and the world all realized that she was a true novelist, and from that moment she directed all her energies to the production of those works which will ever live, in spite of all changes of fashions and modes of story-telling, classical specimens of English fiction. In rapid succession now followed 'Adam Bede' in 1858; 'The Mill on the Floss' in 1860; 'Silas Marner' in 1861; 'Romola' in 1863; 'Felix Holt, the Radical,' in 1866; the poem 'The Spanish Gypsy' in 1868; 'Jubal and Other Poems' in 1870; 'Middlemarch' in 1872; 'Daniel Deronda' in 1876; and her last work, 'The Impressions of Theophrastus Such,' which was not published till after the death of Lewes, which occurred in 1878. She married Mr. Cross in May, 1880. She died on December 22d, 1880. To lead to the fuller understanding of George Eliot's works, it was necessary to sketch in broad outlines the growth of her life and personality. As a writer she was not only a novelist but also a poet, and above all a social philosopher. Her ethical bias is so strong, moreover, that one cannot understand her as a novelist or a poet unless one has grasped her social philosophy and the all-pervading and ever-present influence it has upon her mind and writing. In her delineation of character and depiction of scenes, especially those of rural and domestic life, truthful rendering is to her the supreme duty; and one need but open the 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' 'Adam Bede,' 'The Mill on the Floss,' 'Silas Marner,' and 'Middlemarch,' on any page, to realize the fullness of truth with which she has painted. At the time of their appearance, not only were the persons and the environment identified with the originals she had in her mind, but as lasting types they tallied exactly with people and local life known to each English reader. This truthful rendering was also conceived by her as a primary duty of the novelist. We would refer the reader to what, in an essay, she says of the English peasant in fiction, and would recall her own words in the same essay:--