MARRIAGE QUESTION: George Eliot's Double Life

Book number: 95107 Product format: Hardback Author: CLARE CARLISLE

In stock

Bibliophile price £7.00
Published price $30


When she was in her mid 30s, Marian Evans transformed herself into George Eliot, an author celebrated for her genius as soon as she published her debut novel. During those years she also found her life partner, George Lewes, writer, philosopher and married father of three. After 'eloping' to Berlin in 1854, they lived together for 24 years. Eliot asked people to call her 'Mrs Lewes' and dedicated each subsequent novel to her 'Husband'. Although they could not marry legally, 'this double life, which helps me to feel and think with double strength' was a relationship which scandalised her contemporaries yet she grew immeasurably within it. Academic philosopher Clare Carlisle explores the novelist's interrogation of Eliot's own 25 years of unsanctioned coupledom with Lewes and also the difficult love relationship she unleashed on her heroines. Beautifully balancing literary interpretation with biographical and philosophical reflection, Carlisle explores the gamble of yoking your happiness to the 'open-endedness of another human being'. The book traces in particular Eliot's influences from Goethe to Hegel, Comte and Darwin in a richly considered study that brings us close to the heart and mind of a great writer and a wise soul. Carlisle moves from novel to novel, and her chapter on Middlemarch, the masterpiece of Eliot's midlife, is an intense and empathetic study. 369pp, many photos and reproductions of letters and chapters covering vocation, motherhood, disillusion and success among them. 2023 US first edition.

Additional product information

ISBN 9780374600457

Customers who bought this product also bought

FINDING THE STILL POINT
Book number: 94620 Product format: Paperback Author: JOHN DAIDO LOORI
Bibliophile price £5.00
Published price £12.99
WALKING IN THE WOODS
Book number: 95299 Product format: Paperback Author: PROFESSOR YOSHIFUMI MIYAZAKI
Bibliophile price £6.00
Published price £9.99
TWILIGHT CITIES: Lost Capitals of the Mediterranean
Book number: 95295 Product format: Paperback Author: KATHERINE PANGONIS
Bibliophile price £6.00
Published price £10.99
EMPIRE OF THE SUMMER MOON
Book number: 95261 Product format: Paperback Author: S. C. GWYNNE
Bibliophile price £8.00
Published price £12.99
DARK MATTER AND DARK ENERGY
Book number: 95257 Product format: Paperback Author: BRIAN CLEGG
Bibliophile price £5.00
Published price £9.99
BUZZ IN THE MEADOW
Book number: 95253 Product format: Paperback Author: DAVE GOULSON
Bibliophile price £5.00
Published price £9.99

Browse these categories as well: Historical Biography, First Editions, Lascivious Lives