[Sidenote: Dinah.] The character of Dinah grew out of my recollections of my aunt, but Dinah is not at all like my aunt, who was a very small, black-eyed woman, and (as I was told, for I never heard her preach) very vehement in her style of preaching. She had left off preaching when I knew her, being probably sixty years old, and in delicate health; and she had become, as my father told me, much more gentle and subdued than she had been in the days of her active ministry and bodily strength, when she could not rest without exhorting and remonstrating in season and out of season. I was very fond of her, and enjoyed the few weeks of her stay with me greatly. She was loving and kind to me, and I could talk to her about my inward life, which was closely shut up from those usually round me. I saw her only twice again, for much shorter periods--once at her own home at Wirksworth, in Derbyshire, and once at my father’s last residence, Foleshill. [Sidenote: Adam.] The character of Adam and one or two incidents connected with him were suggested by my father’s early life; but Adam is not my father any more than Dinah is my aunt. Indeed, there is not a single portrait in Adam Bede--only the suggestions of experience wrought up into new combinations. When I began to write it, the only elements I had determined on, besides the character of Dinah, were the character of Adam, his relation to Arthur Donnithorne, and the mutual relation to Hetty--_i. e._, to the girl who commits child-murder--the scene in the prison being, of course, the climax toward which I worked. Everything else grew out of the characters and their mutual relations. Dinah’s ultimate relation to Adam was suggested by George, when I had read to him the first part of the first volume: he was so delighted with the presentation of Dinah, and so convinced that the reader’s interest would centre in her, that he wanted her to be the principal figure at the last. I accepted the idea at once, and from the end of the third chapter worked with it constantly in view. MARIAN EVANS [LEWES]: in ‘George Eliot’s Life.’ * * * * * [Sidenote: ‘The Mill on the Floss’ not strictly autobiographical.] [Sidenote: Labor of writing ‘Romola.’] [Sidenote: Her sense of possession.] [Sidenote: Dorothea and Rosamond.]